RCC and Joe Saliba set me up to chase Sant over Mistra - Pullicino Orlando

The Nationalist MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando has said he was instructed by Richard Cachia Caruana, Malta’s permanent representative to the EU, and former secretary-general Joe Saliba to “chase after Alfred Sant” in a bid to counter the embarrassing revelations from the Mistra scandal that the Labour leader had unearthed in the run-up to the 2008 general election.

The MP said in an interview with freelance journalist Josanne Cassar that his ‘elaborate mise-en-scène’, in which Pullicino Orlando harangued the Opposition leader at his press conferences and cried in public during a PN political meeting, was orchestrated by Cachia Caruana and Saliba to confront Sant when he mentioned him.

“I went along with it because I am loyal to the party but then it got completely out of control and it became the electoral issue. Stupidly so, I think, because Dr Sant lost all his credibility when he did not wish to face me. There was absolutely nothing to attack me on and I will keep on saying it until I’m blue in the face,” Pullicino Orlando said.

In 2008, the MP was revealed by Sant to have rented his land at Mistra, a protected Natura 2000 site, for the eventual construction of an open-air discotheque. Sant revealed that a permit had been issued by MEPA for the construction of the disco.

A memorable showdown came at a Broadcasting Authority press conference for Sant, where Pullicino Orlando was controversially issued with a temporary press card to be fielded as a PN journalist and face Sant.

“When it came to the BA press conference, I actually had people coaching me beforehand, telling me exactly what to say. In that first article I wrote on 1 May in order to pre-empt the issue, I had a ghost writer,” Pullicino Orlando told Cassar, without revealing who had written the article.

The MP also claimed that Alfred Sant’s psychological profile was studied intensely by the PN to predict how he would react.

Pullicino Orlando also expressed confidence of being “100% certain” that he will be returned to parliament in the next election but that he had not yet decided to contest the elections. “I’m feeling a bit uncomfortable – this is not the party I felt I was in. The level of attacks against me and colleagues of mine are now becoming unacceptable.”

He also said he would not place any bets on the Nationalist Party winning the election in 2013. “The PN should look at the bright side. If you use your time in Opposition well you can re-organise yourself and there are a number of areas where this is needed.”

In one of his bolder statements, Pullicino Orlando said he prefers ‘someone like Lorry Sant’ – the notorious Labour minister who had threatened to punch him during a students’ protest – to the kind of ‘backstabbing’ he is experiencing from within party quarters.  “I prefer someone like that whom I could see coming at me, rather than someone whom I think is a colleague but who will not only stick a knife in my back but use me as a dartboard.”

He even dismissed the need to attend each parliamentary session: “To go there and listen to MPs regurgitate speeches which others have said before them, is a complete waste of time. I’m not going to punch in, and punch out either; I go when I have something to contribute, as I did with the committee meetings on divorce.”