Labour Party delegate Nathalie Attard opened a broadside on outgoing secretary general Jason Micallef in a letter which she also sent to other delegates, accusing him of destroying the MLP, leaking sensitive party documents and of framing her up.In her vitriolic attack, Attard – who was secretary to former deputy leader Michael Falzon – admits she had lobbied for Micallef’s election in 2003. But five years later, things have changed radically.
“Yes, back in November 2003 I worked to get you elected as secretary general,” she wrote in the letter dated 4 July. “I was not surprised by the letter you sent this week announcing you will be standing for re-election to the post which in the past five years you showed you were unfit for. You were the person who, because power went to your head, destroyed the party leadership, destroyed the administration, and you also destroyed everything that your predecessors worked for in the party.”
Echoing accusations levelled at him by Falzon during the leadership campaign but in a much more aggressive tone, Attard slammed Micallef and blamed him for what she calls the “November 2006 frame up” upon her.
“You should be ashamed of yourself, asking for my trust!” she writes in her reply to Micallef’s letter to the delegates. “Have you forgotten what you did in November 2006? Have you forgotten the frame-up against me? Have you forgotten the damage (you caused)? Have you forgotten that you used me to try to destroy someone else?”
Attard goes on to accuse Micallef of leaking the agenda of the national executive to MaltaToday, which she claims was exclusively available to Alfred Sant and himself, besides alleging that he also leaked the executive’s minutes of a decade ago to this newspaper.
“If you don’t reply to me, it doesn’t matter; I’m intelligent enough to realise how they reached MaltaToday,” she writes. “I also ask you – Is this the kind of continuity you are going on about?”
Continuing in the same inflammatory vein, Attard adds: “Be ashamed, if you know how!! You have the interest of the party (at heart)? Your only interest is personal. Where was the absolute loyalty towards the leadership in the last five years? Don’t make me laugh and don’t keep insulting my intelligence.
“I can tell you that you don’t have to ask to meet me as delegate. I don’t feel sorry for you, just as you didn’t feel sorry for me… And I don’t empathise with you if the Nationalist media keep running stories about you. Doubtless they do it because in their eyes, and in the eyes of several others, including a lot of Labourites, you don’t deserve to be in this post. From my end, set your mind at rest that this time round, I will use my vote sensibly.”
Commenting on Attard’s allegations yesterday night, MaltaToday’s editor in chief Saviour Balzan said: “Jason Micallef was never the source of any of the stories that Attard mentions in her letter.”