And while the app allows you to delete messages from both sides of the conversation, this feature is only available for around an hour after messages are sent. Any messages deleted afterwards will only be deleted from your side of the conversation.

WhatsApp messages can disappear from your profile if you change your phone but a spokesperson for Delia confirmed with Lovin Malta that he hasn’t changed his phone since his election as leader.

What messages were exchanged between Delia and Fenech?

Earlier this month, Sunday Times of Malta published a series of WhatsApp chats between Delia and Fenech in early 2019, before the businessman was arrested for the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia but after he was outed as the owner of the Dubai company 17 Black.

Fenech at one point asked Delia if he was up for an informal meal, with the PN leader thanking him for the offer and telling him he will ask his then head of media Pierre Portelli to organise it.

Fenech also offered moral support to Delia after his wife accused him of domestic violence and after the PN was soundly trashed at last year’s European Parliament and local council elections.

How did Delia react to their publication?

The PN leader’s immediate reaction was to claim the chats were “created” as part of a scheme organised by people within the Labour Party in an attempt to intimidate him from fighting against their corruption.

He later asked the police to investigate how these messages were leaked, warning that it constituted a criminal breach, prompting criticism from Therese Comodini Cachia, the person earmarked by MPs to replace him, for trying to reveal journalists’ sources.

At a press conference held moments after he lost a confidence vote among his parliamentary group, Delia said his messages with Fenech don’t appear on his WhatsApp.

“We can press the button together and you can see that there is no message trail, messages or a message face,” he said. “It’s not even coming up; it doesn’t exist, which means it must have been removed.”

He was asked about this issue in three separate interviews over the weekend and gave the same answer all three times.

“If I search Yorgen Fenech in my WhatsApp, nothing comes up,” he told The Malta Independent. “I have no idea if the police cut off his service, but nothing comes up on my phone.”

“The conversation doesn’t exist on my phone; it was deleted from somewhere, either by [Fenech] or the police,” he told Radio 103.

However, his explanation doesn’t match up with WhatsApp’s own rules, and indeed PN MP David Thake noted that messages Fenech sent him in 2019 still appear on his phone.

“How didn’t Fenech’s message to me vanish from my phone?” Thake, one of several MPs calling for Delia’s resignation, said. “Because I didn’t delete them, because I have nothing to hide.”

What do you make of this?