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James Debono
The Labour party has set its eyes on Rabat as its battleground. Rabat is one of the few crucial localities which could go either way in March’s local council elections. Labour has been keen on keeping Abela’s past association with Indri Zammit alive, first revealed in MaltaToday. Labour is flogging the horse senseless as news bulletins on Super One TV and Kullhadd’s front page feature the story continuously. Little new revelations at this point have trickled in: Abela’s association with Zammit had stopped long ago when the latter was apprehended by the police on accusations of contraband trade, on the fishing boat he owned with Abela. The company then had to go into liquidation. The fishing boat, which was sold by customs officials following its seizure, later managed to find its way back into Zammit’s hands again after the buyer sold it to him.
But the mere mention of drugs, in this case, just makes it all the more devastating for Abela, who on paper is still a registered shareholder of Ajaca Ltd, the company which is still pending liquidation. In one of its recent instalments, Super One filmed Abela walking away briskly from a journalist, drenched by a heavy downpour as he left parliament. Hardly decorous for a junior minister.
But his repeated vilification by the Labour media is the party’s strategy in discrediting the Nationalist Party in the Rabat locality, even though it risks killing the story in the absence of new revelations. Some could even start viewing the MLP’s campaign as excessive.
In the last elections in 2003, the Malta Labour Party managed to overturn a Nationalist one-seat majority to end a decade of Nationalist rule in the northern town. But the difference between the two parties amounts to a handful of just 290 votes. Labour’s consolidation of its hold in Rabat, can lead it to further inroads in what is traditionally Nationalist heartland.
There could not have been a worse start for the Nationalist campaign to reclaim the loyalty it has lost amongst the Rabtin. Its very own Rabat heavyweight, Parliamentary Secretary Tony Abela, whose past association with a man accused of drug trafficking, Indri Zammit, has returned to haunt the PN.
Not only is Abela the party’s electoral anchor in Rabat, but his head of secretariat Tonio Farrugia is also the prominent member of one of the town’s rival band clubs.
Now Notary Abela’s popularity has suffered a nosedive. According to last week’s MaltaToday survey, only 28 per cent of Nationalist voters trust him. The past weeks have been replete with rumours of Abela’s son Sam’s possible candidature for the local elections. Labour weekly Kullhadd reported the candidature was welcomed by the PN’s administration.
The PN has also outlined its strategy to win back the Rabat council. The PN’s strategy is to expose divisions in the Labour camp. The present Labour mayor, school teacher Frank Fabri, was elected after his predecessor Charles Azzopardi had resigned as mayor. In 2003, Azzopardi won 1,554 votes, 500 more than Fabri. Upon his resignation, Fabri, a close collaborator of MP Evarist Bartolo, found himself mayor of Rabat. Although considered a rising star in his party, Fabri is seen by some from the party grassroots as being too condescending.
In a letter to the Times on Friday, PN candidate Rudolph Grima made a direct appeal to those who had voted for Azzopardi to remember that their choice had not been respected by the Labour party. Grima alleged that Azzopardi had only resigned “after continuous pressure had been mounted on him.”
With the Nationalists expecting to lose votes in Sliema and Marsaskala, where they respectively face a challenge from Alternattiva Demokratika incumbent Michael Briguglio, and former Nationalist MP Josie Muscat’s new list, recovering the old Rabat town from Labour could be the ultimate consolation price.
jdebono@mediatoday.com.mt
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