PN sets aside PD’s no confidence motion in Konrad Mizzi to discuss Caruana Galizia murder instead

Parliament will debate the Nationalist Party’s motion on Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder in next week’s sitting dedicated to the Opposition.

The decision was announced this evening and the debate will take place on 6 December.

The motion was originally tabled by the whole PN parliamentary group on 15 October, a year after Caruana Galizia was slain in a car bomb.

The motion calls for an independent inquiry into Caruana Galizia’s murder and the resignation of the police commissioner and the Attorney General.

The PN’s decision means that a motion of no confidence in minister Konrad Mizzi filed by the Democratic Party will only be debated, if at all, after Parliament’s Christmas recess.

The PD filed the motion in the wake of revelations that an investor in Electrogas was the owner of 17 Black, a Dubai company that appeared as a target client in the Panama companies of Mizzi and Prime Minister’s chief of staff Keith Schembri.

Earlier on Wednesday, PD leader Godfrey Farrugia urged Opposition leader Adrian Delia to “walk the talk” and put the no confidence motion on Parliament’s agenda.

That appeal has now been ignored and the PD motion will have to wait.

In a statement the PN said that its MPs had always voted in favour of no confidence motions tabled in the past against Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and Konrad Mizzi.

“The PN will continue its fight against corruption in Parliament and outside and urges all MPs and Maltese of good will to make theirs the fight against corruption,” the statement read.

The reference to how PN MPs always voted is an indirect jibe at Godfrey Farrugia, who had voted against a motion of no confidence in Konrad Mizzi put forward in 2016.

Farrugia was then Labour Party Whip and despite publicly saying Mizzi should resign over the Panama Papers revelation, went on to vote against a motion of no confidence in the minister.