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NEWS | Wednesday, 16 April 2008 Anglu Farrugia to contest MLP deputy leadership FRANICA PULIS Labour MP Anglu Farrugia will officially announce his candidature for the deputy leadership for parliamentary affairs on TVM on the news programme Reporter, which will air today at 7:40pm.
He said he had taken into consideration his showing in the leadership contest after the 2003 elections, where he garnered 26% of the delegates’ votes. “After taking into consideration the party’s interests, my choice will be to strengthen the leader whoever he or she is. I will give my service to the party leader as a deputy leader for parliamentary affairs.” Commenting on his allegations of vote-buying, which he reported to the Commissioner of Police, Farrugia said there had been no results from the investigations so far. He said he gave details about certain ministries where people with an interest in voting for the PN were given immediate employment, government housing, and planning permits. For the first time, he also produced a photo of a ballot sheet with its first preference vote to the first Nationalist candidate in the list, and successive preferences in chronological order to the rest of the Nationalist candidates. Farrugia claimed a voter was threatened with redundancy if he did not vote for the PN. He said the voter was taken by car to the polling booth, where their ballot sheet was photographed using a mobile phone that was not theirs. On Thursday, Labour leadership contender Evarist Bartolo will discuss on Reporter the reforms he believes are necessary for Labour to grow, once again reiterating the need for support from the middle class. “The party needs to find a certain inner peace, that accepts people within the party who are not of the same opinion, which gives room for a wider culture, more diversity and better compromises. A party that is not united and incapable of governing itself with all its inner differences, cannot govern a whole country.” Last Monday, deputy leader for party affairs and leadership contender Michael Falzon said on Reporter that Labour must be “more positive”. “For many years it has been negative and more or less isolated, even from the so called country’s institutions.” Falzon also said Labour needs a new radio frequency that can attract the younger generation or the floating voters, but said he does not consider the publication of an English-language newspaper because of the running costs it would involve. Any comments? |
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