A former PN local councillor from Bormla has claimed he was sidelined by the Party after refusing to join an internal faction plotting against PN leader Bernard Grech.

In the judicial protest filed on Friday, against the Nationalist Party, its secretary general Michael Piccinino and the Electoral Commission, and signed by lawyer Ishmael Psaila, James Cauchi explained that he had been a member of the Nationalist Party for over 35 years and had held a number of roles within the party, adding that he had received the absolute majority of votes in one Bormla local council election, but had been ineligible for the post of mayor because the party did not achieve a majority.

Judicial protests are often a first step before civil proceedings are filed, but have no executive power by themselves, nor are they sworn on oath.

Cauchi is asserting that in January this year, he had been approached by PN Secretary General Michael Piccino and asked to contest the local council elections again, a proposal which Cauchi accepted via an email he sent a few days later.

Piccinino had confirmed receipt of the email.

In the following months, while his candidature was still being discussed by the party executive, he had received a phone call “from a person with close ties to the PN”, asking him to join an internal group which was intended to push for a new party leader, to replace the current PN leader, Bernard Grech.

The judicial protest filed by Cauchi alleges that the unidentified caller was part of an internal faction which was large enough to see Grech toppled by a vote of no confidence and that Cauchi had refused to join the rebels.

He had received that phone call after he had accepted the Secretary General’s invitation to re-contest the local council elections, he said.

But despite following up and frequently asking about the progress of his candidature, he was left in the dark as to whether he had been accepted.

Cauchi felt that his unblemished reputation and the fact that he had never been the subject of internal disciplinary action made him an ideal candidate to represent the party.

But no confirmation of his candidature ever arrived, he said, adding that he later found out that his nomination had not been presented to the Executive before the lapse of the nomination period, depriving him of the opportunity to contest the election.

The would-be candidate said he had “ended up feeling like he had betrayed a number of voters from Bormla who had always given him support over the years”

While it does not contain any explicit demands, the judicial protest warns that Cauchi was reserving his right to exercise the legal remedies available to him.

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