Alfred Sant’s surgeon Mr Anthony Zammit stole the limelight at the start of Labour’s general conference Thursday night, using his very operation upon the Opposition leader as an example of Labour’s “triumphalism”.
But with his remarks – made all the more surprising after weeks of bland medical bulletins which skirted the operation details altogether – Zammit, also a Labour candidate, has now entered the partisan fray for good.
Within hours, the surgeon was lambasted by the PN for “attempting to ride on Alfred Sant’s operation for partisan gain” through his “extreme, unprecedented politicisation of the medical profession,” in the process “bluring his role as surgeon with his political candidature”.
“We emerged triumphant,” Zammit said about Sant’s operation, earning a standing ovation from the assembled delegates while in the same breath slamming those who criticised Labour’s handling of the information. “Where is the professional ethic?”
That was precisely the question also put to him by the PN, as it accused Zammit of manipulating the Labour party’s medical ailment for political gain, at a time when “the whole country showed great maturity in the case of Sant”.
However the Medical Association of Malta thinks otherwise. Contacted by this newspaper, secretary general Dr Martin Balzan said: “Since Mr Zammit’s speech was carried out at the Labour Party conference, which was clearly a political event, in a political context, the association finds no ethical issue in his statement.”
In his speech, Zammit made a comparison between Sant’s confidence in being operated in Malta and, in a clear reference to former PM Eddie Fenech Adami, made a contrast with others who had decided to be operated at the Mayo Clinic in the US.
“The PN would like to remind Zammit that Eddie Fenech Adami had been referred to Mayo Clinic on the recommendation of Dr Mario Vassallo, who happened to be the one of the medical consultants to Alfred Sant’s case,” the PN’s information director, Gordon Pisani, said. “Moreover, in the US, Eddie Fenech Adami was under the care of Maltese consultant Professor Michael Camilleri.”