Minister believes MFA should remove president

Malta Football Association president Joe Mifsud said he did not owe Social Solidarity Minister Dolores Cristina an explanation after she called for his removal following the association's handling of a recent case involving a convicted paedophile.

Speaking on Radio Malta yesterday, Mrs Cristina said that the MFA should remove Dr Mifsud because of the way he handled the case.

The issue had made the headlines after the CEO of the Foundation for Social Welfare Services Joe Gerada decided to go public with the fact that the MFA had kept a convicted paedophile employed as groundsman at the Pace Grasso Ground in Paola, even after being informed of the matter.

Besides being used for the MFA's activities, the ground, which is government property, was also made available to the students from the adjacent Guzè D'Amato School as their playground. The MFA only ended the groundsman's employment at the end of the football season, after Mr Gerada made the matter public and four months after the man was found guilty of defiling a 13-year-old boy in December 2003.

The association had reacted to Mr Gerada's decision to speak to the press about the matter with a terse statement calling his actions "cheap propaganda". In the same statement the association said that it would be closing the ground to the school-children.

During yesterday's programme the minister said that she had been kept informed by Mr Gerada during his dealings with the association behind the scenes. "At one point," she told the programme's host Georg Sapiano, "Mr Gerada informed me that he felt that there was no other avenue left for him to solve the issue but to go public, and I told him to go ahead."

Asked whether she thought Dr Mifsud should resign, the minister was hesitant at first, saying she was not there to point fingers but added that she expected him to apologise. When pressed by the host, however, Mrs Cristina said she believed the MFA should remove Dr Mifsud.

Contacted for his reaction, Dr Mifsud said he did not need to give any explanations for his behaviour. "Do you think I should give the minister any explanations?" he asked.

He refused to comment further about the case, saying that any questions on the matter should be forwarded to the association's PRO. Attempts to contact the latter, however, were unsuccessful.

Last Tuesday the matter took a new twist when Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi told Parliament that the MFA had no title over the soccer ground and therefore had no right to bar its use to the students.

The Education Ministry has sent a letter to the association questioning why the students were being denied access. No reply has been forthcoming and when contacted by The Times last Wednesday, Dr Mifsud again declined to comment.

He told The Times that he was abroad and could not comment on what Dr Azzopardi said in Parliament as he had not heard or read his comments. In Malta yesterday, however, he refused to comment nonetheless.