‘PN is not part of rumour mill on Muscat’ says deputy leader
Simon Busuttil reiterates PN denial that party is behind unspecified allegations.
Nationalist deputy leader Simon Busuttil has reiterated a PN denial that the party was behind unspecified allegations about Labour leader Joseph Muscat's personal life.
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"There were comments on the social media attributing a rumour to the PN, of claims that this party never made about the Opposition leader's personal life. We issued a statement saying we are not part of these rumours, and that this is not the type of party we are," Busuttil said in a short comment today.
An official statement by the Nationalist Party on Thursday gave fuel to the fire of a month-long whispering campaign on Labour leader Joseph Muscat's personal life. The PN denied being behind claims that it would "come out with a story" on Muscat's personal life - claims first made on the Facebook site of electoral website www.election2013.com.
According to its Facebook post, election2013.com said: "We are hearing rumours around the water dispenser [sic] that PN are planning to come out with a story on Joseph's Muscat Personal Life in the last week of the election campaign. As we said these are only rumours so far However some more concrete details are leaking like: what the story is about.... so PN planning to drag Joseph Muscat's personal life into the mix??... is it an all time low for politics in Malta ??... who knows !, we'll just wait and see..."
In a denial, the PN said this was a fabricated story and that it was "strongly denying the allegation and disassociating itself it in the most categorical of manners. The PN does not believe this is the way of doing politics."
The election2013.com website is the property of Avante Systems, whose business development manager James Catania told MaltaToday today that he was surprised at the PN's "relevant speed at which it reacted to the post", saying that the rumour was gaining currency in several Labour and Nationalist quarters.
Catania would not confirm whether he was a Labour sympathiser, and whether his post on Facebook had pushed what was initially a rumour onto the mainstream media. "I'm amazed at the kind of reaction that the PN had on this post... my website is equidistant from both parties, so we were only putting out what we had gathered from sources from both parties."