Labour fighting Siggiewi eviction with judicial protest

The Labour Party is fighting a government decision not to renew the lease of its Siggiewi part club, when it filed a judicial protest in court claiming the move is discriminatory and a breach of human rights.

The protest was filed against the Commissioner of Lands, the director of the government property division and the Siggiewi Local Council.

The PL says that since the club was to be transferred to the local council for use as a daycare centre once the lease expired, at the end of June 2010, and the local council had already acquired land to build a daycare centre, the Lands Commissioner’s decision was motivated by partisan politics.

The party made explicit reference to PN candidate and councillor Karol Aquilina as the instigator of the decision.

The club was a private residence which was requisitioned by the Nationalist government, which turned it into a civic centre. When the property fell into disuse, a Labour government transferred it to the Labour party to use as a party club on the eve of the 1981 general elections.

The Nationalist Party said it was “scandalous” that the PL wanted to deny the elderly of a daycare centre, and accused it of perpetrating the forceful requisitions of private premises that took place under the Labour government of the 1980s.

“Joseph Muscat is confirming that Labour does not want to change anything from the scandalous abuse and corruption with which it acquired public buildings when it was in government,” the PN said.

In a letter he wrote to the Opposition leader, Karol Aquilina said Labour “surely knows it is legally and morally in the wrong.”

He said Labour’s attempt to keep the property was abusive and was “unworthy of a party that claims to believe in a strong democracy and in full respect of the law… It wouldn’t be much of a good example to society if Labour illegally occupies a historical property.”

In his letter, he appealed to Muscat to stop the party from hindering the Siggiewi’s councils attempts to develop the property into a daycare centre.

In July 2009, the Siggiewi local council approved a resolution to have the property, in St Nicholas Square, devolved to it.

The government has already accepted the council’s request to use the premises as its administrative centre and turn it into a daycare centre for the elderly.