NEWS | Monday, 01 June 2009

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Charlot Zahra
Labour MEP candidate Joseph Cuschieri strongly rebutted claims made about him that appeared in the Nationalist weekly paper Il-Mument yesterday, describing them as a “fat, big and ruthless lie” about him.
The article in Il-Mument claimed Cuschieri and fellow Labour candidate Glenn Bedingfield were going to be appointed as Managing Director and Head of News at One Productions Limited, the company running the PL’s radio and television stations, if they were not elected.
Cuschieri accused the Nationalists of trying to get their revenge on him at the eve of the European Parliament elections. “The Nationalists and Lawrence Gonzi still have not forgiven me for ceding my parliamentary seat to Labour leader Joseph Muscat so that he could be elected in the House of Representatives as Leader of the Opposition,” Cuschieri insisted.
The Labour candidate described the plan mentioned by the Nationalists’ media machine as “solely a figment of their imagination”.
He said the Nationalists were “well aware” that with him elected an MP, they will not be able to “bulldoze on workers, pensioners, the middle-class, students, hunters, and the rest of the people”.
Cuschieri explained that the only way the Nationalist Party had at its disposal to stop him from being elected to the EP on 6 June was by coming out with a huge lie on him.
The candidate recalled how it was the Nationalist Party leader Lawrence Gonzi himself who had declared in Parliament that the country still needed Cuschieri’s services and expressed his admiration for the contribution that Cuschieri gave to the country and to parliamentary democracy over the years.
“Now Lawrence Gonzi and his party are panicked because they know that in this election I am attracting towards me even Nationalist voters as well as floaters who have admired the step that I had taken,” he declared.
Cuschieri accused the PN of being afraid of the consequences that they would be suffering with the electorate, as well the fact that Labour leader Joseph Muscat was increasing his popularity with the electorate.
In view of this “barefaced lie” about him by Il-Mument, intended to harm him personally, Joseph Muscat and the Labour Party, Cuschieri had instructed his lawyers to start libel proceedings against the Nationalist newspaper.

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