Pullicino Orlando, former Nationalist MP, announces Labour candidature

Just 30 minutes before the Electoral Commission stop receiving nominations by candidates for the general elections, former Nationalist MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando turned up at the Counting Hall Complex in Naxxar to submit his nomination.

Pullicino Orlando, once hunted down by the PL over Mistragate, has decided to contest the seventh district on the Labour Party ticket.

Contacted by MaltaToday, Pullicino Orlando confirmed that he had decided to run for elections in “a decision that was certainly not easy”.

“Joseph Muscat has encouraged me to contest with the Labour Party. I truly believe that Muscat should continue leading the party and so I’ve accepted,” Pullicino Orlando said, adding that polls he commissioned on the seventh district received positive feedback.

But the former MP - who fell out with the Nationalist Party in 2012 when he resigned from the party - had been the target of the PL's electoral campaign in 2008, when then leader Alfred Sant accused him of corruption.

Asked whether it was ironic that, once persecuted by Labour he was now running with them, Pullicino Orlando replied: “It was evident that the Nationalist Party was using me to win the elections. The PN was going to lose and they used me to win the election.”

He added that submitting the nomination at the eleventh hour showed “that I thought this decision through”.

Asked whether he would do to Labour what he did to the PN, Pullicino Orlando reiterated that, from 2008 onwards, the PN had persecuted him. “Because I didn’t agree with what it was doing, the PN persecuted my family. I became the victim of personal attacks leading me to take the difficult decision of becoming an independent MP. But I’ve been working with [Muscat] for the past four years and I believe that he should continue leading the country.”