‘I never told Gonzi I would vote against the RCC motion’ – Pullicino Orlando

Former Nationalist MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando had declined an invitation from Anne Fenech to give his opinion to a Nationalist Party commission analysing the causes of the 2013 election defeat.

But in a reply he gave Fenech on being asked to participate in the commission, Pullicino Orlando - whose ousting from the party ticket in 2012 led him to become an independent MP - said it was the threats and insults against him for speaking his mind on several issues that led to his alienation from the party.

"I spoke about the reasons that were leading the Nationalist Party into becoming what will probably be remembered as the most unpopular, arrogant and conservative administration ad nauseam for four years. The result? Threats, insults and worse. My family was put through hell because I was doing what I felt to be my duty," Pullicino Orlando told Fenech in the reply that he showed to MaltaToday.

In comments to this newspaper, the former MP, who chairs the Malta Council for Science and Technology, took issue with claims by former prime minister Lawrence Gonzi that Pullicino Orlando promised him he would not vote with the Opposition in the 2012 motion that forced the resignation of chief strategist and ambassador to the EU Richard Cachia Caruana.

"I have a different definition of loyalty," Pullicino Orlando said referring to Gonzi's claim that he was betrayed. "It was disloyal of Cachia Caruana to pander to the whims of foreign powers behind parliament's back - I believe it would have been disloyal of me to condone such behaviour."

Cachia Caruana was accused of having devised a 'procedural band-aid' in discussions with the United States and NATO officials that allowed Malta to re-enter NATO's Partnership for Peace without the need to seek parliamentary approval in 2008. The revelations in embassy cables published by Wikileaks were used by Labour to force a foreign affairs committee that culminated in a parliamentary motion censoring the permanent representative to the EU.

"Lawrence obviously disagrees," Pullicino Orlando says, referring to the issue of loyalty, "as evidenced by the €240,000 'golden handshake' he gave Cachia Caruana after he was forced to resign. His attempt at trying to depict Cachia Caruana as some form of altruistic martyr by saying that he stayed on as his personal advisor free of charge - after being forced to resign - was cheeky, to say the least."

Pullicino Orlando denies having lied to Gonzi on his intentions to vote for the motion. "I never told him that I was going to vote against the Opposition motion censoring Cachia Caruana. I have always been absolutely honest with him, even when it was difficult for me to do so. Two notable and related examples which come to mind are the Opposition's motion on the Co-Cathedral project and that associated with the honoraria issue.

"I was asked by Lawrence, directly, to declare my voting intentions to him, in both cases. I told him that I was going to vote with the Opposition. In the first case I didn't do so because Lawrence stopped the project. In the second he told me that he would call a general election if I supported the Labour honoraria motion. He insisted, even when I asked him whether he was willing to put the country through an election because of a pay rise he had given himself. It was never my intention to disappoint the thousands of Nationalists who gave me their vote by toppling their government of choice, so I was constrained to agree to a compromise."

The MP was elected on two districts in 2008 after nearly costing the PN re-election over allegations by Opposition leader Alfred Sant that he had influenced a planning decision to pave the way for the rental of private land in Mistra for the siting of an open-air discotheque. Initially paraded by the party as a martyr of Sant's 'bullying', Pullicino Orlando later claimed he was aware of an internal push by PN strategists to have him resign his parliamentary seat.

But his conversion into an open critic of the party's decisions, Pullicino Orlando told Fenech, saw him being "labelled as a traitor and a dissident simply for speaking out about issues such as divorce, the Arriva fiasco, the ARMS debacle, the Co-Cathedral project, the honoraria issue, the St. Philip's Hospital Acquisition issue, the car parks privatisation issue, gay rights and IVF."

"Servility should never be confused with loyalty," Pullicino Orlando wrote to Anne Fenech in the reply he showed MaltaToday.

"I was being loyal to the party and to the people by speaking out, rather than twiddling my thumbs and waiting for the next elections to come around. I was ridiculed for saying that the people were sick and tired of a government hell-bent on choosing form over substance.

"Had others taken the difficult step of standing up to be counted, your party would not be in the shambolic state it has been now reduced to. I have wasted enough of my precious time and energy on the Nationalist Party. In fact, I have wasted far too much of it. I would now like to dedicate my energy elsewhere. I am therefore, respectfully, declining your invitation," Pullicino Orlando told Fenech.

Speaking to MaltaToday, Pullicino Orlando said he found it interesting to see certain issues all singled out as factors which contributed to the humiliating defeat suffered by the PN at the polls, given that he had "ended up being pilloried for daring to speak" about them.

"I still believe Lawrence to be a decent man who was sorely let down by those he chose to surround himself with. I would also like to believe that, in his heart of hearts, he knows who truly betrayed him and the Nationalist Party, leading to a massive swing and reducing the party to a shadow of its former glorious self. And it isn't those of us who stood up to be counted."