I had hoped never to have to think of that rotten piece of damp and crumbling wood when he was finally kicked out of the leadership of the PN. But Adrian Delia is an admonishment of fate. He’s not going away.

Judging by the writing of that Trump-nostalgist, Yorgen Fenech-apologist, anti-vaxxer-promoting Simon Mercieca, Adrian Delia wants his old office in Pietà back. Like a comic-strip baddie – a slightly inebriated, mostly drunk on self-confidence, Lex Luthor on the last panel of the comic strip, drawn chained in a high-security cell of a specialist mental asylum – he promises he’ll be back.

He’ll spin madly and he’ll obfuscate doggedly and he won’t care who gets hurt in the meantime. He’s like a mad scientist, indifferent to consequence, overtaken by his own greed and ambition. And along he’ll represent himself as a victim of the evil establishment, the swamp he was not allowed to clear out.

Consider that in the 56 years of history of the Dar tal-Providenza, Adrian Delia is right in the middle of the first-ever controversy surrounding that charity’s funding. Even our ever-feuding, unforgivably infantile political parties knew better than to preen and outbid each other at id-Dar tal-Providenza’s fundraising events.

We learnt from Francis Zammit Dimech a few days ago that there’s been a long-standing agreement between the PN and the PL to keep their donations to the cause low key and not to indulge some partisan arms race which benefits no one, least of all the residents of the Dar tal-Providenza.

Adrian Delia, who must have known of this agreement because he was, incredibly, PN leader for a number of years, saw this as an opportunity to outshine the party he used to lead.

Is it a bad thing that someone takes time out to raise money for charity? Look. It depends why they’re really doing it. Adrian Delia may have a soft heart for good causes, but his over-riding desire to look more useful than his party is, frankly, revolting.

Having raised €22,775, compared with the PN’s restrained €1,000, he gave his supporters a field day. Simon Mercieca says people who voted Adrian Delia out, felt regret at his departure from the PN. Presumably, these people, if they do exist, think it is the job of a party leader to use the needs of charity organisations to advertise their own capabilities.

But the twenty-grand-plus was just the overture, the first noisy barrage using pesky conventional weapons. The nuclear bomb would come several minutes later when Adrian Delia announced a pledge of €500,000 from an obscure company we now understand is China-based.

Adrian Delia told The Malta Independent this morning that he hired a “top” audit firm to look into the person he was dealing with at the donor company. “Nothing untoward” was found.

While Adrian Delia was speaking to The Malta Independent, that person, the company’s CEO Faisal Abdullah Alokla, was speaking to Times of Malta. Turns out the donor did not undertake due diligence into Adrian Delia. He thought he was dealing directly with the Dar tal-Providenza, not with a washed-out politician using him to grind his blunt axe and dragging both him and the Dar tal-Providenza into a controversy they never asked for.

This raises so many questions.

What sort of CEO promises €500,000 to someone asking for the rather substantial sum, without googling the name of the person they’re giving the money to? Adrian Delia’s name is not exactly unknown to the internet.

How did this CEO, who is supposed to run a multi-billion-dollar company, get the mistaken impression that Adrian Delia ran the Dar tal-Providenza? What did Adrian Delia tell him?

A toxic politician, rash, unjustifiably self-assured, desperate to cling to an existence he feels entitled to, has contaminated a potential business investment in the country and he has exposed one of the most deserving and long-established charities to embarrassment.

Adrian Delia is no longer PN leader. But remember the reasons why that happened. Someone like that does not change. He metastasizes.