Defiant JP Farrugia lambasts ‘GonziPN’

In what appears to be a direct challenge to the Prime Minister, the Floriana doctor who has refused to accept the increase in his MP honoraria, said in an email posted yesterday and circulated to all his colleagues within the PN Parliamentary Group, that it was a shame for ‘GonziPN’ to approve a €600 increase per week in salary. Then to give an increase to all MP’s two years down the line, so as not to put the Ministers in a bad light.

In his email, Jean Pierre Farrugia specifically used the words: “Lanqas jisthi! dak leadership! dak GonziPN!”

He started off his email by saying that the MP who leaked his controversial email last year, could do so this time round.

Replying to this email, Zebbug MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando added fuel to the fire, by cynically commenting that now, the budget for ministerial salaries was down by €1.5 million – in a clear dig to Prime Minister surprising statement that the national coffers had saved money with a reduced Cabinet.

Reacting to this email today, at around 09:30am, Jean Pierre Farrugia referred to Nerik Mizzi, the former PN Prime Minister who remains revered for his integrity.

He queried: “What would Nerik Mizzi think of all this?” and then proceeded to remind the Prime Minister of having had the cheek of commemorating the late Mizzi at Castille itself.

He ended by stating “Dak political correctness!”

The email was also copied to PN secretary-general Paul Borg Olivier.

'I don't recognise the PN anymore'

In an interview with MaltaToday last Sunday, Jean Pierre Farrugia stressed that he does not recognise the PN anymore.

Farrugia, one of the PN’s longest-serving MPs and a former President of the party’s executive committee, has admitted he is at odds with the performance of the party and the government.

He recently broke ranks by renouncing an annual €7,000 salary increase in his MP’s honorarium, after the government found itself in a maelstrom of accusations of secretly increasing Cabinet ministers’ salaries by €26,000.

Farrugia says he no longer recognises the party and that the PN is no longer what it was in the past.

He also  identifies with what the former president of the PN’s administrative council Carmel Cacopardo declared in his resignation letter, that he “did not recognise the party anymore”. But the MP, a popular GP in the first electoral district, says he still hopes the PN “recovers its identity”.

Farrugia said the increase in honoraria for MPs, to be effected with two years’ of arrears after ministers were awarded a higher parliamentary honorarium in 2008, had shocked people from all society’s strata.

“I am stopped by people in the street who are stupefied by the way the government is cut off from their realities. I am sad about this. But this is the way people feel…”

Farrugia also said that by increasing their remuneration, the Prime Minister had exposed himself to the charge made by Lino Spiteri of ‘buying silence even from the Opposition benches’.

“I’m only quoting Spiteri… I’m not saying this is the case,” Farrugia says. “But it’s one of the worse aspect of right-wing politics, that of thinking that one can do anything one likes with money.”

Farrugia, referring to the ongoing debate on divorce, was adamant in stating that the PN’s identity was not based on moral conservatism, but on Christian-democratic values of social justice. “I am a Christian-democrat and a Catholic. But I am not a moral   conservative. The Nationalist Party I know is not confessional. It is a party which whenever confronted by an issue it does not stop from studying and tackling it…”