Nisa Laburisti executive secretary resigns over disagreement with party direction

Jennifer Tabone, who served as executive secretary of Nisa Laburisti resigned her post on Wednesday, citing disagreement with the party’s direction, MaltaToday has learnt.

Tabone’s resignation from the Labour Party’s women’s section came soon after Prime Minister Robert Abela was quizzed by MaltaToday about blogposts made by Labour apologist Neville Gafa in which he targeted Tabone.

Sources in the party told MaltaToday that Tabone informed the PL leadership she disagreed with the direction being taken by the party on a number of issues.

Tabone who worked at the OPM before 2017 was a life long PL activist. She was harshly criticised by Neville Gafa recently for the decision taken by Nisa Laburisti to issue a stern statement disagreeing with Deputy Prime Minister Ian Borg’s decision to nominate Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace prize.

Nisa Laburisti had said it could not understand how anyone could boast about peace when one’s actions leave behind “a great divide fueled by racism, classism, misogyny, xenophobia and homophobia”.

Gafa was last summer given a position of trust within the Office of the Prime Minister, dealing with customer care. He also carries out customer care work from a ground floor office at the Labour Party headquarters in Hamrun.

Last week, Gafa removed flowers from the memorial to mark the 8th anniversary of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder, a move that earned rebuke from several embassies that had attended the memorial and placed flowers.

Gafa’s actions, including a description of Caruana Galizia as “a witch” and a campaign to have the European Parliament reverse the decision to name a hall after the journalist, have embarrassed the government.

But while Abela has distanced his government from Gafa’s words and actions, he has failed to condemn his person of trust over repeated statements that are putting the government in a bad light.

On a separate note, the prime minister was this week also forced to clarify that disgraced former chief of staff at the Office of the Prime Minister, Keith Schembri, has no role within the Labour Party. However, Abela confirmed that he did communicate with Schembri. 

Schembri said on Ricky Caruana Podcast that he was helping Robert Abela and the Labour Party to win the next election.