‘PN insider leaked Mistra contract to us’ – Labour on 2008 political scandal

Adds PN statement at 3:21pm

The Labour Party has declared that a PN insider leaked the damning rental contract that betrayed Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando's denials of having had nothing to do with the questionable planning application for his land in Mistra, an ecologically sensitive area, to be turned into an open-air disco.

The statement comes hours after Nationalist MPs Francis Zammit Dimech and Beppe Fenech Adami declared on TVM's Realtà and One TV's Issues on Wednesday evening, that Opposition leader Joseph Muscat had been the source of information that forewarned the PN of Alfred Sant's plan to attack Pullicino Orlando in the 2008 election.

"The PN's spin is as big as the lies invented by Lawrence Gonzi and Richard Cachia Caruana in the 2008 election," the PL said in a statement.

"Joe Saliba had started this lie four years ago in an interview to the Sunday Times," the party said, referring to claims by the former secretary-general in June 2008 that Joseph Muscat had hinted at the Labour strategy on Mistra during a TV programme.

"GonziPN knows who amongst them leaked the Mistra story on the eve of the elections, who leaked the contract and who leaked sensitive documents," the PL said.

On its part the Nationalist Party issued a statement and said "nowhere in its statement did the Labour Party deny that Muscat spoke to a person within the Nationalist Party about the Mistra case."

The PN said that when Muscat had passed on the information that Labour's target was going to be a prominent PN candidate.

"Now that four years have passed since Saliba said that it was Muscat who had disclosed this information, Labour is trying to find a means of finding a way out of what its leader said."

The PN statement added that Labour never denied the claims when Saliba first made his statement, implying that Saliba's claims were true.

"It is only now, in a state of panic, that Muscat and Labour are trying to deny this in a weak attempt to cover what Muscat had done. This confirms that Muscat is an amateur and a coward politician."

The PN also noted that Labour did not deny that it was Muscat who had disclosed the information but instead alleged that it was somebody within the PN that leaked the Mistra story to Labour.

In the cited interview, Saliba claimed Joseph Muscat had given "indirect hints" at political activities that enabled the PN to deduce that Labour was about to reveal details of the controversial permit.

Saliba had said that Muscat had, on a TV programme, announced Labour would be releasing information "to implicate one of the candidates in corruption. A couple of days after the programme, in a private conversation, Muscat inadvertently continued giving hints to show that he was aware of Labour's strategy and we managed to identify the candidate they would be picking on."

The Mistra scandal of 2008 was the backdrop to a hard-won victory stolen from the jaws of defeat by the Nationalists, who managed to turn Pullicino Orlando into a victim of political 'bullying' and in the process get the MP elected on both his constituencies.

But since having voted with the Opposition to force the resignation of Richard Cachia Caruana from permanent representative to the EU, largely on the grounds that he suspected his hand behind a push to make him resign his seat after the 2008 election, the PN has now gone on record stating that the MP never told the party he had negotiated a €1.9 million rental agreement.

Reporting the aftermath

In 2009, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando claimed that Saliba did not just 'guess' he was going to be attacked, but that he knew exactly what he was going to be attacked about. "He sent me chasing after Sant prepared to rebut any allegation he might make about the Mistra 'scandal'.

"Hence he got me to write that famous article which appeared in the Times on 1/3/08 entitled 'Street Corner Gossip' which anticipated Sant's attack and neutralised it somewhat. One asks: why did Joe lie about how they were forewarned?"

The MP said this in a comment posted on columnist Daphne Caruana Galizia's blog, who today is credited as having ghost-written 'Street Corner Gossip'.

Pullicino Orlando had then claimed the details of the Mistra story were leaked to Labour from his own party, and that he was instantly sidelined by the PN after the election, despite setting up a veritable defence against Sant's accusations.

Jason Micallef, the former Labour secretary-general who was the first to get the details on the Mistra permit, had told this newspaper that the Labour Party's source was not a PN official.

The Mistra scandal also led to police charges against two MEPA officials charged with trading in influence for issuing the Mistra permit, but who were later acquitted Pullicino Orlando claimed it was "certain elements" from his political spectrum that fed "misinformation" to the media and whipped up a public outcry.

Pullicino Orlando also claimed "a high-ranking Cabinet minister" told him the two planning authority members were charged in court to satisfy the outrage generated by Mistra-gate.