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The Labour Party received information about the business links John Dalli’s family had with an Iranian shipping company from the PN’s central office, MaltaToday has discovered. The revelation adds fuel to the allegations made by the former Foreign minister that he was framed by his own Party. The episode finds its origins in a meeting representatives of the company SMS had with PN Secretary General Joe Saliba.
Saliba passed the information on to Prime Minister Dr Lawrence Gonzi. Some days later the story surfaced in the Labour press. SMS is on record stating that it never met or divulged information to the Labour Party and the company took offence to Dalli’s assertions made on television that SMS could be sponsors of the MLP.
MaltaToday has discovered that contacts exist between officials of Labour Party and Nationalist Party and these occasionally exchange information discreetly from behind the safety of a roller-shutter.
The revelation comes at a time when MaltaToday can confirm that when John Dalli resigned on July 5, senior officials at the PN central office locked themselves in a room drank whisky and clinked glasses to celebrate the ‘good news.’ The celebration has disgusted many other Pieta employees.
The revelations continue to put pressure on Joe Saliba’s candidature who is seen to have catalysed ‘a crisis of unity’ in the party. Senior party officials are still incensed at the unilateral decision taken by Joe Saliba to appoint a Commission to look into the PN’s biggest electoral defeat since 1953. Anger also surrounds names chosen.
“It is the secretary general the Commission should be looking at,” said a minister, who insisted on not being named.
“How can a Commission appointed by the secretary general himself scrutinise his own political judgement?”
An increasing number of PN parliamentarians have told MaltaToday that the Nationalist party is facing a crisis and the roots lie with central office.
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