Pullicino Orlando stands his ground in Parliamentary speech

Nationalist MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando insisted today that Opposition leader Alfred Sant’s allegations about him with regard to the proposed Mistra disco were misleading and mistaken.

He also reiterated when speaking in Parliament this evening that once police investigations were completed, he would be able to show how his actions and those of the Nationalist Party before the general election were correct.

Dr Pullicino Orlando in his speech criticised Dr Sant for having raised the case when he spoke in the House on Monday, saying that reflected a lack of respect for the investigation.

Furthermore, Dr Sant was continuing to mislead the public, and now the House, by making allegations which were “totally mistaken and fabricated.”

The Nationalist MP said the contract which Dr Sant had referred to in his speech proved that he (Dr Pullicino Orlando) had nothing to do with the planned disco. Indeed, he had been the one to hand a copy of the contract to the Police Commissioner before the election.

Furthermore the plans for the disco, which were publicly accessible, showed that this was to have been able to take a maximum of 500 people and not 4,000, and then 8,000, as claimed by Dr Sant.

Dr Pullicino Orlando said he was surprised that Dr Sant was persisting in his campaign of misinformation.

Despite the enormous pressure being brought on him by the Labour spin, however, he would hold back comment until the conclusion of the police investigation.

When that happened, however, he would be able to show how correct he and the Nationalist Party had been in their actions and declarations before the general election, Dr Pullicino Orlando said. Everybody would then be able to judge which voters had been misled. Those who had launched this strategy against him would need to give a different interpretation of what they called The Mistra Scandal.

Dr Pullicino Orlando tabled the plans of the proposed disco as approved by Mepa, saying that of the club area of 740 square metres, just over half would have been a landscaped area with indigenous trees. Much of the remaining site would have been a paved area with a small area having a height that was not higher than two metres.

He was tabling these plans, Dr Pullicino said, not because he had any part in the project, but to show how Dr Sant had been giving misleading information.

He also tabled an article published in The Times on March 1 where he explained that he knew of the project but not its details since that involved only the developer.

Dr Pullicino Orlando denied that he had ever said he did not know who he leased the Mistra site to. What he had not known was who had submitted the development application on behalf of the lessee.

The lessee had later explained to him that he had asked somebody else to submit the application because he feared that if a particular influential person involved in the same business came to know, he would try to obstruct it, as he had done in the past. Indeed, one had to assume that the same had happened, with the help of the MLP, Dr Pullicino Orlando said.