Bernard Grech hits out at Prime Minister: ‘Abela doesn’t have guts to face own MPs’

Reactions have started pouring in on Rosianne Cutajar’s decision to resign from the Labour Party parliamentary group with PN leader Bernard Grech taking a pot shot at Robert Abela.

In a live appearance on the party station, NET TV, soon after Cutajar resigned, Grech accused the Prime Minister of weakness.

He said the Prime Minister was unable to kick Cutajar out of the parliamentary group and it was the MP herself who resigned.

“Robert Abela does not have the guts to face his own MPs if they do something wrong… it shows a Prime Minister who is compromised and unable to take the decisions that matter because he is not in control of the PL and not in control of the decisions this country needs to have cleaner politics,” Grech said.

The PN leader said the MP’s resignation showed the Prime Minister as someone unable to take important decisions. “Rosianne Cutajar decided for the Prime Minister and she is challenging him by remaining an MP,” Grech said, asking what Cutajar knows about Abela and her colleagues in parliament.

In another pointed reaction, Nationalist MEP David Casa said that if Cutajar was not fit to be a Labour MP, she was neither fit to remain an MP and should resign from parliament.

Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri said Cutajar did the right thing when asked for his reaction just before entering the Labour headquarters for a meeting of the executive committee.

Camilleri said Cutajar understood that the PL was subjected to criticism over something “she believes is unjust”.

“What she did [her resignation] was correct, just as it is correct for her to continue the court battle to protect her rights… Rosianne understood that she did not want to be a burden on the PL,” Camilleri said.

He added: “She took the decision on her own and as a person who has worked within the PL since her youth, whether as an activist, as a mayor or as an MP, she understood that she did not want to be a burden in any way.”