Flashback to three months ago (March 2025):
Borg said that while this confrontational style might appease parties’ core voters, it is unlikely to do much to sway floaters or people who are completely disinterested in politics.
“Rather than discussing the issues that people want us to talk about and the problems they are facing, such as the cost of living, traffic and overpopulation, we are discussing the Speaker. Will this issue attract the 100,000 people who don’t identify with either party and don’t want to vote? I don’t think it will.”
Following Dr Bernard Grech's shock resignation on June 10th, from his post of leader of the PN, I think that it is worthwhile to recall what originally led to this predicament. Things had come to a head about five years ago, prompting the Nationalist Party's general council to vote in favour of a fresh leadership contest. The vote was 56% in favour, and 44% against. At the time the leader of the PN was Dr Adrian Delia, who incidentally was the very first leader elected directly by the party membership, way back in September 2017. Overall I think that history has demonstrated clearly that the Nationalist Party's general council had erred greatly when it decided to annul the result of the first direct election from the party membership, and in the absence of any concrete proof of malfeasance. As it turned out, Dr Bernard Grech won the new leadership contest against Dr Adrian Delia, after winning 69.3% of the votes against Delia's 30.7%. This was the second time that the party membership was called to elect the party's leader.
Joseph Gatt "Many in the [PN] party have come to realise that his [Adrian Delia's] dethronement was a strategic mistake, which left his successor limping amidst lingering resentment that cost the party thousands of votes in the 2022 election. "— James Debono (https://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/national/135678/analysis__pn_at_a_crossroads_the_narrow_ideological_choice_)
Joseph Gatt In four years' time we will have the bicentennial of the introduction of trials by jury in Malta! 😮
Pope Leo XIV is expected to move into the official papal residence, an apartment on the top floor of the Apostolic Palace, departing from the living arrangements used by Pope Francis for 12 years. The papal apartment, which is a series of rooms wrapping around the Vatican’s Sixtus V Courtyard, was the traditional home of pontiffs for over a century before Pope Francis eschewed those living quarters for a suite in the Vatican’s guesthouse, the Casa Santa Marta.
Besides the papal apartment, the Apostolic Palace — also sometimes called the Palace of Sixtus V for the pope who had most of it built — contains Vatican offices, the Vatican library, and some of the rooms now part of the Vatican Museums.
