De Marco hits back at conspiracy over Times’s ‘anti-Gonzi’ campaign

The Nationalist Party’s deputy leader for parliamentary affairs, Mario de Marco, has taken umbrage at claims by a Malta Independent columnist that his role on the Strickland Foundation – the trust that owns Allied Newspapers, publishers of The Times – influenced an alleged editorial decision to “demonise” Lawrence Gonzi in the run-up to the 2013 election.

The outburst comes in the wake of an opinion penned by Simon Mercieca, a University of Malta academic who in 2013 was tasked to co-author a report on the PN’s electoral loss.

Mercieca wrote in his piece that De Marco should resign his PN post over allegations that longtime friend and Allied’s former managing director Adrian Hillman, could have accepted some form of bribe from Keith Schembri, the paper supplies businessman who became Joseph Muscat’s chief of staff.

The allegations by Daphne Caruana Galizia, a TMI columnist, have as yet been unsubstantiated by any documented evidence, but prompted the Allied Group to launch an internal inquiry headed by retired judge Giovanni Bonello.  

“To substantiate his claim of undue interference, Mr Mercieca refers to what he calls decisions taken by the editors of The Times to demonise Lawrence Gonzi and ministers who were close to Dr Gonzi. He questions whether I had a hand in this. Mercieca’ s claim is the stuff of science fiction,” De Marco, a former minister for the environment and culture under Gonzi before 2013, and later a leadership contender who lost out to Simon Busuttil, said.

Simon Mercieca was rolled out in public first by the anti-divorce campaign, before assuming a more prominent role as a PN pundit and authoring the electoral loss report with Rosette Thake and Ann Fenech.

But De Marco said that the Gonzi administration was hampered by the financial crisis abroad, and internal party strife, as well as questionable decisions he had “no qualms in assuming collective responsibility for”, as well as taking an independent press for granted.

“The journalists of The Times, like journalists from other independent media, were presumably not cocooned or immune to what was happening at that time. Most journalists in the Times and the other independent media criticized the stand we took as a party in government on divorce. Various young journalists thought that the party was too conservative on LGBT issues and was refusing to move ahead with the times.

“Does Simon Mercieca honestly think that their position was part of some conspiracy against Dr Gonzi as opposed to a justified position representing a more liberal attitude prevalent amongst our younger generation from which many journalists hail? They criticized government just as most of the independent media is now questioning this government on a regular basis. No journalist worth his salt owes any government a living.”

De Marco said his anger at the criticism towards the PN administration from the press was only at his own government’s inability to turn the situation around. “The solution in such difficult circumstances is not to attack, question, intimidate or ridicule the members of the press that rightly or wrongly exercised their right to hold government to task but to either right your wrongs or to work harder to convince others that you are right.”

Mercieca has claimed in his opinion piece that the newspaper’s criticism of the Gonzi administration were part of a “bigger plan” for De Marco to assume the party’s leadership after 2013.

De Marco, who recently underwent surgery for a tumour on a facial nerve, said that these last four months had been “hell for him”.

“I do not believe I am [perfect]. Each day I question why I am in politics. I am however driven to stay on by a sense of duty towards the ordinary man and woman I meet in the street as opposed to those who live in ivory towers and enjoy spinning conspiracy theories.”