PN takes Labour leader to task over former minister’s ‘democracy’ piece
Nationalists in bid to ‘shame’ Joseph Muscat over Alex Sceberras Trigona opinion piece.
The Nationalist Party said Labour leader Joseph Muscat should sack "political dinosaurs" like former minsters Karmenu Vella, Alex Sceberras Trigona and Leo Brincat to Cabinet level, if he is to prove that his party is no longer hosting remnants of the 1980s Mintoff and Mifsud Bonnici governments.
The PN has latched on to a controversial piece published in The Times in which former Labour foreign minister Alex Sceberras Trigona, whose legacy includes drafting a secret treaty with communist North Korea for arms and police training, claimed the present government was "blatantly undemocratic" after having lost its one-seat majority.
"Muscat's description of Sceberras Trigona's article in The Times as a 'good academic exercise' is shameful and insensitive. It proves Labour won't work, and that with the likes of Alex Sceberras Trigona and Karmenu Vella it will take the country 30 years back," the PN said.
The party's billboard campaign, a rehash of the 1979 British Tories' 'Labour is not working' campaign, is telling voters Labour "will not work" and warns of rising unemployment levels under a Labour administration. On its part, Labour has accused the PN of rehashing a theme first used 33 years ago.
Writing in the Times, Sceberras Trigona - who is today serving Labour as its international secretary - claimed the additional four seats the PN government had gained by winning a relative majority by 1,500 votes, had now been lost after MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando had broken away from the party and taken up an independent seat. "Without a relative majority of votes those compensatory four extra seats are no longer due to the government. Retaining those extra four seats without any justification whatsoever is grossly unfair and manifestly unwarranted. Malta's government has now become blatantly unrepresentative and undemocratic," Sceberras Trigona wrote.
On its part, the PN today accused Sceberras Trigona of being a minister in a Labour government that ruled Malta with an iron fist - "suppressing freedom of expression, crushing the hopes and ruining the lives, of thousands of young men and women."
"Instead of showing him the door, Muscat promoted Sceberras Trigona to the very important role of Labour's international secretary. Muscat defends his man and describes the article as 'a good academic exercise'... This is proof of how insensitive Muscat is. He wants us to believe that his party has changed, and that it has now become a 'progressive movement' - which is really not the case. Labour remains the same, and it won't work," PN spokesperson Frank Psaila said.