The report by Matthew Vella in MaltaToday of Wednesday 29 July is nothing less than an attempt to create a distortion of the facts and the truth.
Your readers, especially the Siggiewi residents, must be astonished as well as dismayed by the report and I applaud all the PN Siggiewi councillors for their decision to approve the motion spearheaded by their deputy mayor Dr Karol Aquilina – for the Council to apply for the devolution of the premises presently occupied by the Labour Party in Siggiewi Main Square.
Your correspondent was wrong and grossly unfair on at least three counts. The first was that the Council is seizing the Labour Party Club premises at Siggiewi when in fact it is the other way round, as it was Labour who seized the premises way back in 1981 and extended their unashamed seizure before the 1987 general election.
Mr Vella should be aware that the PN councilors’ priorities in their duties as councillors is not the Party they represent, but those of the residents and the locality. Moreover the PN has every trust in its representatives on local government and does not attend council meetings to act as watch dogs on its councillors.
Secondly Dr Karol Aquilina acted in the sole interest of the Siggiewi residents and hopefully the Government will approve the Council’s request to pass on the Labour party Club premises to the Local Council to be turned as a Civic Centre for the benefit of all the Siggiewi community.
The Labour Party Club is the people’s property and it is scandalous that it has been occupied by a political party – worse still when the allocation was made 24 hours prior to a general election. There are other Labour Party Clubs that were taken by the infamous Socialist requisition method we continuously witnessed in the 1970s and 1980s.
Thirdly your report failed to mention that The Labour Party President and the Labour’s information secretary were present for the Siggiewi council meeting during the discussion on Dr Karol Aquilina’s motion. Why did they attend? Was it because they do not trust their councillors or was it because they wanted to influence the proceedings? Your reporter’s ridiculous comment that the motion had something to do with the post of President of the PN Council was both naïve and amateurish reporting especially after Dr Aquilina had declared that he had been carrying out research on the matter about the Labour Club premises seizure by the Labour Party in 1981 for a number of months.
Finally well done and thank you Robert Musumeci, Karol Aquilina, Mark Vassallo and Joe Sammut, you have shown very clearly that the PN Councillors’ sole interests are the people and the localities they represent.
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