The Labour Party's stream of fabrications has caused a great deal of disaffection among its own, prompting a call to the Nationalist Party last Thursday with the information that Alfred Sant would be flinging more mud at a press conference the following day. The press conference would be held outside Mepa's offices and the target this time, they were told, would be me.
I own a plot of land near the sea which has been rented out to others for some time now. Three years ago, these others applied for a permit to build an underground lavatory and an open-air dance floor less than two metres high. The only thing close is a well-known restaurant. The application has been pending all this time and no final decision has been made. I don't even know the applicants. I have never met them. And, yet, my Labour Party sources tell me that Dr Sant imagined that this would be a great scandal; the one that will cripple the government in the penultimate week of the electoral campaign.
I turned up for his press conference at the appointed hour, outside Mepa's main gate.
I was determined not to give him the opportunity to slander me without being there to counter his allegations or any allegations he saw fit to make in respect of any of my colleagues or the Nationalist Party in general.
He seemed quite perturbed when he saw me. "What are you doing here," he asked. "Have you suddenly become a journalist?" Then, Dr Sant launched into a spiel about the Development Control Commission board. There was nothing new there. Eventually, a journalist from Allied Newspapers broke the flow by asking about the "ammunition" he had led journalists to expect when he summoned them to Mepa's gates. "I have nothing to add to what I have already said," he replied.
It appears that Dr Sant only feels comfortable giving his version of the truth about people in their absence. In their presence, he is unable to present rumour and speculation as fact, for the simple reason that they are there to contradict him, defeating his purpose of twisting the facts and dressing them up in conjecture for the evening news.
The Labour Party, under Dr Sant's control, has become so tangled up in throwing mud and attempting to defame its political opponents that it has left no room for the most crucial part of an electoral campaign: Explaining to the population what Labour intends to do if it wins the seat of government. So far, we have heard nothing but rumour, slander and conjecture. Dr Sant can do this in opposition but he can't do it in government. He can't run the country by shouting offensive remarks about others from his office window at the Auberge de Castille.
Dr Sant and the Labour Party have made no attempt whatsoever to describe how they intend to improve on this government's track record. Instead they have filled the air with the fetid stench of nastiness, running others down with rumour and insinuation like the worst kind of street-corner gossip. This country deserves much better than that and so does the Labour Party.
Dr Pullicino Orlando is a Nationalist Party election candidate.