Ibn Campusino comments

Most of your correspondents' contributions and your readers' letters are signed and their authorship clearly identified. This, of course, is as it should be in a paper that can claim to be a quality and not a gutter publication.

One notable exception is the page featuring University news and comments, whose authorship is hidden behind the pseudonym Ibn Campusino.

Although this masked columnist has been delivering his/her weekly confections for some time, they could not have been considered all that important as to merit querying their authorship.

However, as was pointed out in a letter by Dr Victor Buttigieg, president, University of Malta Academic Staff Association, (The Sunday Times, February 22), on this latest contribution, "within this framework it is crucial to assign authorship of any statement, inference or conclusion".

Ibn Campusino cannot pretend to campaign for any single candidate for the leadership of the Nationalist Party and the future prime minister, from the University News page of your paper, undercover of a pseudonym and get away with it.

This is a matter of some importance but it cannot at this stage of the election of the leader of the PN, and of our future prime minister, be put right, and for this Ibn Campusino is responsible.

However, it is not too late for him/her to come out from the closet and show that he/she has the backbone to make known the identity of the author of the column supporting this particular Nationalist candidate. And as a result the University page in your Sunday weekly would in future assume a more transparent, interesting and credible read.

And finally, an official University spokesman, PRO, Communications Officer, or whatever, should also have something to say about the matter, unless of course he/she prefers to play the part of the proverbial three monkeys.

Editor's note

The Communications Officer sent a disclaimer for the Ibn Campusino page last week which inadvertently was not published. We have published it this week