‘Caruana Galizia told me RCC asked her to attack me’ – Pullicino Orlando

Pullicino Orlando was giving testimony in a libel suit instituted by Richard Cachia Caruana against Mediatoday managing editor Saviour Balzan.

Later, in a confrontation between Caruana Galizia and Pullicino Orlando, the publicist said that she never said such words.

The confrontation was called for by Cachia Caruana’s lawyer Joe Zammit Maempel – the lawyer of the Nationalist party – who today was also appearing as Pullicino Orlando’s lawyer in the MP’s libel suit against former Labour leader Alfred Sant.

Pullicino Orlando – whose role in the Mistra land deal that Sant exposed in 2008 was the subject of the libel suit – insisted he was saying the truth and added that the conversation took place on the phone. “At the end of conversation Caruana Galizia added that if I repeated these words she would deny them,” Pullicino Orlando said.

The attacks were allegedly part of the political spin to destabilise Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, after Sant built an electoral campaign centred around a MEPA permit for the development of the MP’s land in Mistra that he had rented for an open-air disco.

In her testimony, Caruana Galizia told the Court how “stupid” she had been to the MP, noting that she no longer greets him when she sees him. “I believed to such an extent that I gave him my number 1 vote,” she said of the MP, who despite the barrage from Sant had managed to be returned to parliament on both his electoral districts.

She described the MP as someone only interested in backstabbing the Nationalist party. “He should just shut up and be quiet,” she said.

Earlier, she was quizzed by Saviour Balzan’s lawyer Toni Abela about her contacts with the Office of the Prime Minister. She said she was a journalist and she kept contact with public relations and that she talked regularly to OPM spokesperson Gordon Pisani but denied that she published any confidential material from the OPM.

She argued that it was her job to keep contact with public relations officers, and that she also said that she had had contact with the Labour party in the past. When asked with whom, she mentioned former PL secretary-general Jimmy Magro, with whom she had dined on several occasions.

Asked if she had any contact with the Prime Minister’s personal secretary Edgar Galea Curmi, she said she knew him but had only talked to him once and it was over the report that he had visited Saviour Balzan at his home – again on a matter related to the spin generated against Pullicino Orlando.

Responding to Daphne Caruana Galizia, Pullicino Orlando said it was his role in countering Sant during the election that had had won the election for the PN in 2008, and stood by his declarations.