Deborah Schembri's surprise announcement leaves PN speechless

Peppi Azzopardi could not hold his shock and surprise when Deborah Schembri announced that she would stand with the Labour party.  A meeting with Labour leader Joseph Muscat led to Schembri's decision.  

Schembri a family lawyer who comes from a staunch Nationalist family was relatively unknown to politics until she was invited to join the IVA movement by Nationalist backbencher Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando.  She turned out to be a calm, eloquent and decisive speaker.  And she is credited with the landslide decision of 53% in favour of divorce. 

The news will be seen as an achievement by Muscat who is riding on a wave after last Sunday's referendum result.

Her decision will come as a shock for the Nationalist party who were hoping to convince her to stand with them. Schembri said she as not approached by the Nationalist Party, but she told Radju Malta's Ghandi Xi Nghid that she would have picked the Labour ticket had she been presented with a choice.

Schembri said that she felt she had much to offer and that politics would be one way of helping people. 

Late last night blogger and Nationalist apologist Daphne Caruana Galizia criticised the Nationalist party for not having poached Schembri before Labour.  But later she removed her comment from the blog.

Her decision to stand was known to her close collaborators in the IVA movement.  One leading member of the IVA movement told MaltaToday that he was delighted with her decision.  "She has great potential and I am sure she will go places," and adding,"... if she had joined GonziPN she would be used and then stifled from expressing her opinion."

She was denied representation in front of the Church tribunal after her public role with IVA. The news that she was excluded from representing clients at the tribunal contributed to raising her public profile.