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The former Labour mayor of Cospicua, Pawlu Muscat, has confirmed with MaltaToday he is setting up a group of independent candidates to contest the local election in March.
“Yes, we’ll be contesting,” he said when contacted yesterday night. “We’ll be five or six candidates from both Labour and Nationalist camps.”
Muscat will be convening his candidates for their first meeting today in a café in Cospicua.
“It’s no secret,” he said. “I’m going all around Cospicua announcing our plans so that everyone knows our intentions. We will be presenting an alternative joint electoral programme.”
He said he will be flanked by another former Labour councillor, Alfred Attard.
Muscat fell out with Labour after a vote of no confidence by the party councillors in the wake of his allegations that there was vote rigging in the 1992 election of Alfred Sant as MLP leader to the detriment of contender Lino Spiteri.
“Last October I wrote to the Labour party asking them to let me in again but they didn’t even reply,” Muscat said, adding that the Labour saga left him with the bitter taste of betrayal. “I’ll just move on now.”
Three years ago he contested as an independent on his own, garnering only 237 votes.
“I was disadvantaged at that time because the EU membership referendum brought with it a high turnout, raising the quota very high,” Muscat said.
But he still anticipates the Labour party media machine to once again vilify him.
“It is to be expected,” he said.
When he contested in the previous election as a Labour candidate, Muscat got the highest number of first count votes – 695.
kschembri@mediatoday.com.mt
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