Updated | Debono says 'Beppe lied just like Eddie Fenech Adami had lied on Sant'

Updated with Franco Debono's comments.

Nationalist MP Beppe Fenech Adami has hit out at Nationalist MP Franco Debono in the wake of the no-confidence vote which government is to face next Thursday.

Speaking on Radju Malta's Ghandi X'Nghid, Fenech Adami said Debono had long been working behind the scenes and putting pressure to remove Carm Mifsud Bonnici - who at the time was the minister for Justice and Home Affairs - from minister.

"On the contrary to what he has been claiming, that he's not interested in becoming a minister, Debono was always eyeing a ministerial post. I have worked with Debono for the last four years ... I can assure you that he was only interested in becoming justice minister," Fenech Adami insisted.

He added that Debono had repeatedly been "dishonest" with both Mifsud Bonnici and the Prime Minister.

"The position Debono is holding today is the direct result of the Prime Minister's cabinet reshuffle and his decision not to place Debono as Justice Minister," Fenech Adami said, adding that he "lived the times" when Debono was pressuring the Prime Minister to remove Mifsud Bonnici.

Fenech Adami went as far as to claim that when Mifsud Bonnici was not in good health last summer, Debono went on with his "lobbying" to remove him as minister.

"He has long been badmouthing Mifsud Bonnici ... It's one thing criticising an individual, but it's another thing insulting him."

Fenech Adami also claimed that Debono had approached him and asked him to support him to become the next prime minister: "He told me that if I supported him he would place me as justice minister. When I refused his offer, he said I could forget the ministerial post."

The Nationalist MP went on to say that Debono "thinks he is the most intelligent while the rest of us are imbeciles".

He added that Debono also made disparaging comments about former MPs Helen D'Amato and Louis Galea - from whom Debono had inherited the votes when he was elected with the top first preference votes, ousting the former MPs. "To this day he describes D'Amato as 'that teacher from Zurrieq'," Fenech Adami claimed, adding that while Debono is always insisting on the importance of consultation, he never consulted with the parliamentary group while drafting the party-financing law.

On the time when Debono had criticised Arriva, Fenech Adami said Debono's only interest was revenge: "Some 10 years ago, when Austin Gatt was the minister for justice, Debono had a case and Gatt had said the compensation being asked by the persons Debono was defending was not fair. So basically he wanted to get even with Gatt over a personal issue."

Fenech Adami also said that Debono "could never understand" how Opposition leader Joseph Muscat had been elected as leader of the Labour Party. Fenech Adami claimed that Debono always said that Muscat was not of his (Debono) calibre.

Franco Debono accuses Beppe of lying ' just like his father'

In a reaction to MaltaToday after Beppe Fenech Adami's comments, Nationalist MP Franco Debono said that Fenech Adami's assertion was a blatant lie. 

An irate Franco Debono said Fenech Adami's allegations were akin to his father's (Eddie Fenech Adami) lie on Alfred Sant prior to the 2003 election that he was responsible for having kept his son out of university in the 1980s. "Instead of trying to blame him they should ask why Charlo Bonnici had abandoned Louis Galea as his personal assistant, to stand for election and work on his campaign. Bonnici is today employed with construction mogul Zaren Vassallo," Debono said, referring to the former PN mayor and party donor.

He also referred to the case of Nardu Debono - a suspected bomb-maker who was murdered in 1982 while in police custody - and the compensation due to his family.

"Austin Gatt had said that he did agree that the family should be awarded compensation," Debono said, adding it later transpired that the Nardu Debono family received a cheque on the eve of the last election.

Debono emphasised that the lawyer of the Nardu Debono family was Dr Joe Zammit Maempel, the Nationalist party's lawyer.

And he denied his abstention on the no-confidence motion against Austin Gatt was motivated by some personal vendetta. "This is untrue. There was no need for any excuse to speak about the Arriva public transport shortcomings because it was his own father who had acknowledged the problems at the time of the vote. Eddie Fenech Adami had heard what (Gatt's head of secretariat) Manuel Delia had been proposing and immediately informed his sources in government that the Delia proposal would not work out."

He also pointed out with MaltaToday that unlike Beppe Fenech Adami, he did not have a double-barrelled surname but still received more first-count votes than his critics.

Expressing the same sentiment on One Radio's Sibt il-Punt, Debono said Fenech Adami should have said that he (Debono) had fared much better than him (Fenech Adami) during the last elections.

Debono went on to say he could not understand how Nationalist MP Edwin Vassallo had urged him to reconsider his position when he telling him on Xarabnk that the PN's door was always open for him. "Fenech Adami's comments portray a different picture."

The maverick MP insisted people should decide on their own about who was right and who was wrong: "I don't care about my political career. What people should remember is that I am self-made, while competing with people within the party. I garnered a lot of votes, despite the fact that I was competing with three ministers. Unlike these ministers, I had no one to work for me."

Debono reiterated his claim that he was a victim of "a bad political system". He also said that government had jumped on the bandwagon of the international financial crisis by trying to give the impression that the PN government would solve the problems from the economic fall-out. "We did move forward, sure, but not thanks to Lawrence Gonzi."