Gaffarena association keeps both parties busy in summer heat

Malta’s two political parties are at each other’s throats even in the stifling August heat, after Opposition leader Simon Busuttil filed multiple libel suits against GWU organ L-Orizzont.

The newspaper published an affidavit by businessman Joe Gaffarena claiming that as PN deputy leader, Busuttil in 2012 met Gaffarena to discuss issuing him with a permit for his illegal petrol station, in return for information on former EU Commissioner John Dalli, who had been a business associate of Gaffarena back in the 1990s.

Busuttil has denied the reports, saying that it was Gaffarena who requested that his petrol station be granted a MEPA permit, but that Busuttil refused the ‘indecent offer’.

“The Opposition leader is in a state of panic,” the Labour Party claimed in a statement. “If he had nothing to hide he would have immediately declared it. This is the second case that Busuttil does not admit to having had a meeting, before recanting."

The PL said that Busuttil had already denied meeting the whistleblower over the private works commissioned by Gozo minister Giovanna Debono’s husband Anthony Debono, paid by the ministerial budget. “Busuttil later admitted to the meeting, and instead of revealing the PN administration’s abuse, he told the whistleblower he should have stopped from doing the works when the PN was clearly headed for an electorla loss. In this case, Busuttil is denying having requested certain documentation so that Gaffarena’s permit could be issued.”

Busuttil has sinced filed five libel suits against the GWU-owned newspapers and the Labour Party's media.

“The PN has no problem in filing these defamation suits because it has nothing to hide. In these last two years, Labour has been engulfed by scandal, and an ever-widening net of corruption. The recent Mallia inquiry clearly showed the ties between Castille, power, criminality and money, leaving no doubt as to the way this government is being led,” the PN said in a reference to Judge Michael Mallia’s report on former police inspector Daniel Zammit.

The former officer, son of former acting police commissioner Ray Zammit, was said to have stalled a court’s compilation of evidence in the murder charges against the son-in-law of Joe Gaffarena, with whom Zammit and his father Ray (former police chief) had a business relationship.

“The PN will not stop until it has all the truth on the report on the Zammits, and on the Old Mint Street scandal and the involvement of [parliamentary secretary for lands] Michael Falzon.”