Labour raises over €615,000 in week of graft allegations and buoyant polls

A long week of partisan propaganda spots on TV and social media, and buoyant polls, kept the Labour Party liquid as a fundraising marathon earned the party €615,123 in donations.

With the party-in-government under pressure over graft allegations about former prime minister Joseph Muscat’s administration and his chief of staff Keith Schembri’s business links with Yorgen Fenech, the alleged mastermind in the Daphne Caruana Galizia assassination, Labour’s ‘Renewing Ourselves’ (Nkomplu Niġġeddu) campaign did not fail in raising finance.

Prime Minister Robert Abela yesterday confirmed that the party executive and the administration are having talks about moving an amendment to the party statute so that the deputy leader for party affairs will not be an MP.

Chris Cardona, up to recently an MP and a minister, resigned from the post last week after being mentioned in court proceedings related to the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, although he denied any wrongdoing.

Substantial donations included €108,000 from the PL’s Naxxar committee, whose representative singled out former ambassador Michael Zammit Tabona and his business group’s tourist cruise ship company Captain Morgan for praise. “We would like to thank the Naxxar residents, the members of the committee who aren’t here today, Michael Zammit Tabona for his donation and all the suppliers of Captain Morgan,” a representative of the committee said when presenting the donation.

Opposition leader Adrian Delia urged the PL’s Naxxar committee to specify exactly how much of that amount of money was donated by Zammit Tabona and his business group, who were tasked to hold a group of over 400 migrants for five weeks out at sea on Captain Morgan tourist ferries, against a daily €9,000 fee for its three boats.

Indepedent candidate Arnold Cassola failed a complaint with the Elecrtoal Commission, saying the Captain Morgan donation would constitute 17% of the Labour donations, having been previously paid daily fees for its boat. “This is a great example of corrupt practices... we as taxpayers have donated this sum to Captain Morgam, who then donated it to Labour... I am asking for serious action on this.”