[WATCH] Josie Muscat's candidature 'betrays Busuttil's true civil liberties stance'

Josie Muscat, today a PN candidate from mediatoday on Vimeo.

The Nationalist Party's approval of Josie Muscat as an election candidate betrays Simon Busuttil's true stance on civil liberties, the Labour Party has claimed.

Parliamentary secretary for planning Deborah Schembri showed a press conference clips of Josie Muscat speaking out against civil unions and African immigrants and his view that men are provoked into domestic violence.

"Simon Busuttil said that the election is about principles and not proposals, but are these the sort of principles he wants to introduce in government?" she questioned. "After all, he had sat on the fence and abstained when Parliament had taken a vote on civil unions. Can you imagine Josie Muscat as the new minister of civil liberties?"

Schembri also noted that PN candidate Salvu Mallia had insulted members of the public, saying they were ignorant, and had compared Joseph Muscat to the plague, while fellow PN candidate Wayne Hewitt had described the Prime Minister as a “cancer”.

“These are the people that Simon Busuttil is pushing and that he wants as future ministers. These are Busuttil’s credentials as civil liberties,” Schembri said.

Civil liberties minister Helena Dalli noted that Josie Muscat had said back in 2012 that women only become victims of domestic violence after provoking their husbands.

“The Labour government is preaching a zero tolerance policy towards domestic violence and has introduced strict laws in line with the Istanbul Convention on domestic violence. Meanwhile the PN is approving candidates who say that men are men are provoked into domestic violence.”

She said that these words tally with Busuttil’s political discourse such as that he wants “to cut off the heads of people he doesn’t agree with.”

Dalli dismissed suggestions that she was being hypocritical and that she had failed to condemn Labour MPs Joe Debono Grech when he had stood up in Parliament and threatened to beat up MP Marlene Farrugia.

“I had condemned Joe Debono Grech for being verbally aggressive, but he had said those words over the context that Marlene Farrugia was being verbally violent to Labour MPs for several days. I had told Debono Grech that he shouldn’t use that sort of language, but I had also told Marlene Farrugia that she was doing a disservice to victims of domestic violence by crying wolf after being verbally aggressive to Labour MPs,” she said.