Zabbar local council rattled by internal strife

Councillors ordered to remain silent after majority of Labour’s representatives voiced dissent against Labour mayor.

1 September 2013, 12:00am
by James J. Piscopo

1 min read

Zabbar mayor Quinton Scerri

The report published last week by Sunday newspaper Illum on the internal strife within the Zabbar local council led to panic within the council and the southern town.

A few days after the report appeared in Illum about the ongoing dispute between the mayor and the executive secretary, the deputy mayor along with seven other councilors signed a declaration in which they expressed their disapproval of mayor Quinton Scerri's statement and gave their backing to the executive secretary Duncan Busuttil.

Following the publication of the councillor's letter which showed that the Labour mayor had lost support of the majority of Labour councillors, it seems that the Labour Party ordered its councillors to refrain from issuing any public statements.

Attempts to contact the councillors who signed the dissenting letter, proved fuitile with the councillors limiting themselves to say that they had noting to add to what was already stated in the letter.

Read more in today's edition of Illum

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@ "avukat",sparky, & all those lackey or servile: Quote:" You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you CAN NOT fool all of the people all of the time" unquote--Abraham Lincoln.

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sparku I am also not from Zabbar and don't know them personally, but according to some of my friends the new Mayor has upset certain people by stopping things that used to happen and keeping control because the money comes out of taxpayers pockets. Examples cited by my friends included some €700 a year on coffee cans, 50,000 telephone calls a year from the council's office, buying water by bowsers when they have a water reservoir which they can use to water the plants, a secretary's office which is bigger and more comfortable then the Mayor's while to go to the secretary's office you have to go through the Mayor's office instead of vice-versa and other things which should not happen in any local council. According to my friends the Mayor seems to have upset all this and that's why an unholy alliance was created to maintain the previous practices, but my frieds assured me that the Zabbarin know who has never done anything really good for their locality and the energy with which this young Mayor has started to work beginning with the record breaking tabel with the greatest number of people eating at the same time which some tried to undermine by false accusations against the Mayor which were denied by a statement signed by so many bars and shops in Zabbar. The number of votes that he got not only shows his popularity but also how the Zabbarin were fed up with the previous council, mayors and the other counselors who just scraped through being elected.

David Bongailas •

I think the Labour Party should seriously investigate what is happening in Zabbar. I am not from Zabbar myself and I do not know Mr.Scerri or any of the councillors personally for that matter but could it be that the councillors are feeling bitter that a "johnny come lately" won soooo many votes in the last council elections ? Cause that what it sounds like for an outsider. As for the Nationalist councillors they are obviously taking advantage of the situation. ......more bitteness considering that in Zabbar and other Southern localities the Nationalist Party suffered almost complete obliteration in the last round of elections.