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Government denies ‘promising amnesty before election’
Home affairs ministry categorically denies amnesty was promised before the 9 March elections.
10 June 2013, 12:00am
Staff Reporter
Staff Reporter
1 min read
The Ministry for Home Affairs has categorically denied the government had promised an amnesty before the general election.
The ministry was reacting to a press conference given by Opposition spokesman for home affairs Jason Azzopardi who said Labour MPs and candidates had promised the amnesty to convicts and their relatives during the electoral campaign.
Azzopardi also said the PN would be substantiating the claim in the coming weeks.
"The government categorically denies that amnesties were promised," the ministry said in a statement.
The ministry added that the amnesty was "a tool which forms part of government's plan to reform the prisons system which was abandoned by the previous administration".
The ministry also published a list of amnesties given between 1964 and 2013 - 18 occassions in all.
These amnesties, the ministry added, did not include other amnesties granted throughout the years by the Nationalist governments, "some of which remembered by the government for different reasons".
The ministry added that in 2007, Azzopardi himself had proposed an amnesty "for all prisoners" with the installment of a new archbishop.
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Apart from the gross hypocrisy, characteristic now of any PN administration or body, an amnesty, properly placed, and properly administered (a 100 days is not a long period), means that the overcrowded prisons can undergo some relief, that a 100 days of prison would mean that you and me are paying for all these prisoners out of our taxes, and that, since the prison inmates are 60% foreign, we can send them back home a 100 days earlier again saving Maltese taxpayers money. But the PN wants to be seen to be doing something. Only they are picking up the wrong horse EVERY TIME.
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Ipokresija grassa tal-PN. Titkaza b'din l-amnestija meta mill-1987 sa ftit snin ilu inghataw 7 amnestiji - l-ewwel wahda tkun meta tela' l-PN fil-gvern fl-1987. Unbelievable. Ibqghu sejrin hekk u ghad baqalkom hafna biex tikkonvincuni ghall-vot.
