Marlene Farrugia: PN’s donor crisis takes Malta into ‘abyss unseen since 1980s’

Revelations that Silvio Debono’s DB Group has been paying the salaries of the PN’s secretary general and CEO have spiraled Malta into an “abyss unseen since the early eighties”, the Democratic Party has warned.

“The major political parties’ endeavours to undermine each other publicly, while simultaneously scratching each others’ backs to cajole the public ever more convincingly, have disgusted one and all,” the PD – which is spearheaded by independent MP Marlene Farrugia – said in a statement. “The little hope Maltese and Gozitan families had in the ongoing renewal of the Nationalist Party, was thrashed just as cruelly as the great trust they had put in the Labour Movement four short years ago.”

In this context, the PD urged the public not to lose hope but rather to establish a “national people’s force” that will contest next year’s election in the hope of delivering a clean and credible government.

The party also urged President Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca and Auditor General Charles Deguara to “ensure that our country’s national assets and heritage are not plundered and pillaged further by the current government and its collaborators.”

“Authority and rule of law needs to be reestablished as soon as possible, before our country sinks deeper into the quagmire to the detriment of present and future generations,” it said.

The party added that the current political situation bears similarities to that in George Orwell’s famous novel Animal Farm: “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again, but already it was impossible to say which was which”.  

The DB Group, owner of the Seabank hotel who will be developing a €300 million Hard Rock Hotel on the site of the Institute of Tourism Studies, revealed on Sunday that they paid the monthly salaries of PN secretary-general Rosette Thake and CEO Brian St John.

The declaration comes in the wake of statements by Opposition leader Simon Busuttil, who said CEO Arthur Gauci had warned he would no longer back the party financially over statements he made bringing into question the concession granted to the group at St George’s Bay.

Gauci said that he had texted Busuttil earlier in the afternoon saying: “We are requesting an urgent meeting with you so that the party pays back what our group was asked to give all this time.”

Busuttil said during a fund-raiser for the party that he would not stand for this kind of threat.
At 7:30pm, Gauci issued a statement saying that the db Group had been “specifically asked” to cover the monthly salaries of various PN personnel, both before Busuttil’s election as leader and after. “More specifically since [Busuttil] became leader we were asked to cover the salaries of both the secretary-general and the party’s CEO.  Dr Simon Busuttil is fully abreast of both the request for these funds as well as their acceptance. Requests for funds from the PN have reached us as late as yesterday,” Gauci said.