Party secretaries in war of words

Labour Party general secretary Jimmy Magro raised the Nationalist Party's ire yesterday with a statement in which he asked his PN counterpart Joe Saliba to apologise for a statement made during the party's council meeting on Friday.

Mr Saliba on Friday said the government should see to disbanding a web of Labour supporters working in government departments who put spokes in the wheels in an attempt to put the government in a bad light.

But PN information director Gordon Pisani said Super One had reported Mr Saliba as saying he was advocating that such people should be sacked, rather than that the government should not let them put it in a bad light by not giving a good service.

And Mr Magro interpreted Mr Saliba's statement as a declaration of how the government would be treating all Labour-inclined civil servants.

"Mr Saliba's declarations are not based on fact and are nothing but irresponsible threats against Labour-leaning civil servants and are meant to pave the wave for vindictive acts against thousands of civil servants, simply because they support Labour," Mr Magro said.

"The nice sounding words uttered by the PN in its electoral campaign, that it wants national unity, have already been forgotten," Mr Magro said.

He invited trade unions "and individuals who have democracy at heart to condemn Mr Saliba publicly".

On its part, the PN issued a statement regarding a declaration it sent to Super One to correct Super One's reporting of Mr Saliba's speech.

The PN also wrote to the Broadcasting Authority and the Malta Press Club about the matter.

The PN said that as had often happened before, the Labour media had fabricated and attributed to Mr Saliba statements that were not made.

Mr Pisani said: "Super One was given the opportunity to film and record the whole conference and hence they have the recordings of the entire speech and they know that Mr Saliba did not say what they reported him as saying," Mr Pisani said.

"The MLP media are repeating what Mr Saliba was supposed to have said. They are doing this on purpose to put him in a bad light," Mr Pisani said.