Busuttil told Tony Abela to make way for Joe Giglio co-option to parliament

Nationalist Party leader Simon Busuttil met with former parliamentary secretary Tony Abela, in a bid to convince him not to stand in the casual election for the seat vacated by MP Joe Cassar, MaltaToday can reveal.

The Opposition leader met Abela at the PN headquarters, where he told him in no uncertain terms of his wish to have “a new face” in the parliamentary group.

Two senior sources in the PN  group told this newspaper that Abela actually suggested his son – Sam Abela – whom he described as “a popular notary in Rabat” who would make the cut.

Busuttil continued to insist with Abela that the party needed a fresh face – a suggestion which did not sit well with the notary. In fact, even deputy leader Beppe Fenech Adami made an attempt to convince Abela at a chance meeting in Rabat.

Busuttil was hopeful that by having no candidates put their name forward for the casual election, he could co-opt top criminal defence lawyer Joe Giglio to parliament. His wish was also communicated to other candidates.

Giglio is a rising star in Busuttil’s new political line-up. He has been active in PN policy fora on home affairs and justice reforms. And he also replaced Frank Psaila as presenter on NET TV’s popular current affairs programme Iswed fuq l-Abjad when Psaila migrated to Newsfeed, to replace Norman Vella as presenter.

MaltaToday was told that Busuttil was effectively concerned that after Cassar’s resignation, the casual election would see former parliamentary secretary Tony Abela elected to parliament again.

As junior minister in charge of defence between 2003 and 2008, Abela was considered a PR nightmare in Lawrence Gonzi’s government.

Abela won 1,978 votes in the run-off at the fourth count, without making the quota of 2,038 votes, but remaining the last man standing and beating former MP Philip Mifsud, who got 1,892 votes.

Giglio was Busuttil’s choice to replace Cassar

MaltaToday is informed that Busuttil personally communicated to the candidates his wish to see Joe Giglio join the PN parliamentary group.

But Tony Abela was the first candidate to put his name forward for the casual election, and was soon after followed by Philip Mifsud, former Rabat mayor Rudolph Grima, former MP Peter Micallef, and Dingli local councillor David Vassallo.

After his election, Abela told the press that the commitment he had for the party, since the age of 23, was still going strong. “Up until this day, I lent my help whenever it was required – not only to people from my district, but to whoever needed it,” the Rabat notary said.

Abela had already submitted his nomination for the casual election held to fill in Lawrence Gonzi’s seat in 2013 after the former Prime Minister resigned in the wake of the 2013 electoral rout. His seat was taken up by the PN’s former financial controller Antoine Borg, who beat off the competition of six other candidates despite only getting 197 first count votes in the election itself. 

Joe Cassar resigned from parliament earlier this month, following MaltaToday’s revelations about his undeclared ‘donations’ from businessman Joe Gaffarena, when he was health minister.

Tony Abela was first elected to parliament in 1987 and again in 1996, 1998 and 2003. Contesting in one of Eddie Fenech Adami’s two districts, Abela confirmed his heavyweight status by gaining 1,000 first count votes in the 2003 election. 

But he turned out to be a constant embarrassment for his party and a target of Labour Party muckrakers due to a past business association with Indrì Zammit, who was arraigned in 2006 on drug trafficking charges. Zammit had also been Abela’s canvasser before he was first convicted in 1994. On his watch, Abela was responsible for the army when in January 2005 it used excessive force to quell a peaceful protest by 90 persons held in the detention facility at Hal-Safi.

He then came under fire from the Italian media for letting a migrant boat carry on with its voyage of death in rough seas, but the parliamentary secretary told parliament that the immigrants had refused the AFM’s assistance as they were passing through Maltese waters. An AFM logbook later published by MaltaToday, which showed that the immigrants were never asked whether they needed any help in the first place, contradicted this claim. Hours later, 29 of them drowned off the coast of Sicily.

Faced with this damning piece of evidence the OPM insisted that the AFM craft and aircraft were close enough to the migrants’ boat “so that every opportunity existed for the occupants of the boat to signal for help”.

The gaffe-prone Abela was even accused of forcing army officers to give him the general salute on the day marking the army’s 37th anniversary, a privilege reserved for the Prime Minister and the AFM Commander.

Unsurprisingly, Abela found himself a casualty of the GonziPN strategy in 2008, which resulted in a number of party veterans like him losing their seat. But his persistence in standing again in 2013 was rewarded and stands as testimony to the politician’s best quality: his popularity at constituency level, especially in Rabat.