MP says PN fell for Muscat’s civil unions ‘trap’

Nationalist MP Claudette Buttigieg strongly advocated gay rights in the run-up to the passing of the Civil Unions Bill last April, however, when it was time for Parliament to take a vote on it, she abstained along with all the other Nationalist MPs because her party didn’t agree that gay couples should have a right to apply for adoption.

“We fell for Muscat’s trap,” Buttigieg told Sunday newspaper Illum. “Several Labour MPs disagree that gay couples should possess joint adoption rights but voted in favour of the bill anyway. That was the only way the Prime Minister’s plan could work out.”

“Adoption is not the parents’ right but it belongs to children,” Buttigieg said. “I know LGBTI couples who adopted children and are good parents but I also know others who aren’t. The same applies for heterosexual couples.”

“The adoption issue shouldn’t have been included in the Civil Unions law.”

Buttigieg denied that the PN is run by conservative values. “We are a more liberal party that many people think we are,” she said. “For example, it was the PN who introduced local councils and pluralism in broadcasting.”

Claudette Buttigieg used to actually work with Labour’s ONE TV, a position she insists was “purely commercial”.

“I was fired for purely political reasons,” Buttigieg said. “I was five months pregnant and I was told that the studio had received a bomb threat that would be realised if I continued working there.”

“When I tried to verify this threat with the police, it turned out to be fake!”

Read the full interview in today’s edition of Illum