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Karl Schembri
“Indri Zammit needed our help, and whoever needs our help will get it,” is Joe Saliba’s explanation for his party’s appeal to the electoral commission on behalf of the Rabat smuggler and alleged drug trafficker under house arrest to get his ballot for the Rabat council election delivered to his house.
For the PN Secretary General, there was nothing wrong with making a request for junior minister Tony Abela’s former business partner to be able to vote from his home, as he faces charges of trafficking more than 14kgs of cannabis.
Saliba actually turned his guns on Labour Leader Alfred Sant, who revealed the PN’s inclusion of Zammit in its list of “sick, elderly or disabled” who had to vote from home because of their condition.
“Is Sant, or yourself, suggesting that we should discriminate against him?” Saliba said when contacted. “Are you saying he has no right to vote? Are you saying that a section of society that was found guilty or is still accused or whatever should be discriminated against? I would have felt uncomfortable discriminating against him.”
Zammit was found guilty of smuggling objects in 1994 worth up to Lm10,000 on board a fishing boat called Ajaca, then co-owned with Tony Abela. He was given a suspended prison sentence and fined Lm30,000.
Since Sant’s publication of the PN’s letter to the electoral commission last Wednesday, questions about the Prime Minister’s and Abela’s declarations that there were no remaining contacts whatsoever with the Rabat man under house arrest resurfaced just three days before election day.
“Indri Zammit is not living in a home for the elderly,” Sant said. “He lives in his residence and he can’t get out to vote because he is under house arrest in connection with a drugs trafficking case. It is totally untrue that Zammit can’t get out of his house because he is sick, old or disabled. He can’t get out because he has been ordered not to by the court.”
In the letter signed by PN functionary Henri Darmanin, Zammit is listed as residing in his Rabat address, where he is ordered by court to remain confined pending his trial. Phone calls made to his house on the number provided in the PN’s request remained unanswered.
When asked what kind of help Zammit needed from the PN, Saliba said he could not answer personal questions. Pressed to answer whether 55-year-old Zammit was sick, old or disabled, as claimed in the PN’s official letter, Saliba said: “I did not go into that; remember it’s up to the electoral commission to evaluate these requests.”
He also failed to say whether the commission had upheld the request for Zammit.
Saliba also would not say whether Zammit had asked the party to make the request, or whether the party just listed him on its own initiative, but he limited himself to reiterating that “whoever needs help will get it” from the PN.
Asked whether this meant the PN would make a similar request if asked by Lawrence Pullicino and Meinrad Calleja, Saliba said: “We would do the same, we don’t discriminate against anyone. Whoever asks for our help or we know needs our help, we’ll do our best to help him.”
www.maltatoday.com.mt/2006/02/12/top_story.html
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