PN general secretary Paul Borg Olivier insisted this afternoon that the PN had not requested the government to forward to it the names and details of persons who submitted complaints at ministries and departments.
Speaking at a press conference, Dr Borg Olivier said an e-mail he had sent to ministers, which Labour leader Joseph Muscat published this morning, actually burst Labour’s propaganda bubble on this issue.
For nowhere did the e-mail say that ministers or government departments should forward data to the PN. What it said was that ministerial customer care officers should forward such information to the Office of the Prime Minister.
“The information was always intended to be either from the PN to the government, or from the ministries to the OPM but never from the government to the PN,” Dr Borg Olivier said.
He said the party had not published the e-mail earlier in order to await the appropriate moment.
He insisted, however, that everything was being done within the parameters of the law, and the PN had a duty to share with the government any complaints which it (the party) received.
Dr Borg Olivier also argued that it was the Labour Party which was in breach of the Data Protection Act when it published an e-mail mistakenly sent to PL General Secretary Jason Micallef.
See also
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20081204/local/muscat-asks-data-protection-commissioner-to-investigate-pn-e-mail