The contract outing Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando consenting to the Mistra Bay disco development was received by Labour at the eleventh hour of the election campaign, keeping the PN with bated breath as it expected the worst, even sure electoral defeat.
PN insiders say Pullicino Orlando lost them thousands of votes in the last campaign week. More would have been lost had Alfred Sant’s claims been confirmed through the publication of the contract exposing the Nationalist MP as an outright liar even to his own party leader.
MLP secretary-general Jason Micallef told MaltaToday that Sant only produced the contract in the final Broadcasting Authority debate on the eve of the day of reflection “because we didn’t have it earlier”.
Micallef would not specify exactly when the contract reached the party, saying it arrived “very late”. Nor would he deny that only parts of the contract were provided. The party distributed only the first two pages of the contract to the press on Thursday 6 March.
Despite his astronomical showing, Pullicino Orlando remains on the party’s blacklist pending criminal investigations, and totally marginalised by the PN’s leadership.
The prime minister, speaking on PBS news programme Dissett last Tuesday, excluded him outright from his Cabinet before announcing his ministers.
Sources say the PN went into panic after seeing how Labour media treated Pullicino Orlando’s confrontation with Sant at the BA press conference, when Gonzi was still unaware of the damning contract. “That was the incident that led the PN to further question Pullicino Orlando, to stop supporting him altogether and get him out of the limelight.”