VIDEO | The day after Nikki Dimech: Ousted mayor loses favour with residents, but Joanna Gonzi is 'unknown quantity'

Nikki Dimech was ousted yesterday evening as Sliema mayor after an impeachment motion was approved by a PN majority, electing his deputy, Joanna Gonzi, who insisted on denying Labour allegations that the whole saga surrounding Dimech’s case  was a “power struggle” between opposing factions within the PN.

Dimech faced the motion just 48 hours after he was released on bail by a Magistrates Court where he was charged with bribery and having reviled and threatened a public officer in the course of duty. The former mayor has strongly denied the charges.

PN councillor Cyrus Engerer who presented the motion against his mayor stressed that the police accusations “ put the council’s work in difficulty.” But councillor  Sandra Camilleri, who recently resigned from the PN to back the belagured former  mayor, voted against the motion, insisting that she is a “woman of principle.”

The three Labour councilors who sit on the troubled PN dominated council, abstained from the vote, stressing that the whole issue was “politically contaminated”.

PL councillor Martin Debono who thanked Nikki Dimech for his work “to the benefit of Sliema” added that the PL did not support Joanna Gonzi who, he stressed, “showed lack of respect on various occasions towards Labour councillors.”

He pointed out that the police arraignment of Nikki Dimech on Tuesday “could have influenced the vote” and hinted at what he described as  “strange coincidences” about how “confidential information was leaked from certain quarters.”