Another e-mail sent by mistake

According to the report on the Labour leader's address to his party's general conference (December 1) when Joseph Muscat referred to the e-mail that was sent to Jason Micallef in error, he said that "the offers and telephone calls asking us not to release the information were useless. You will not buy us".

It so happens that on March 27 of this year, Wenzu Mintoff, then MLP education secretary, sent an e-mail to MLP acting leader Charles Mangion, copied to all party officials. Instead of e-mailing a copy to then deputy leader Michael Falzon, Dr Mintoff pressed the wrong button and sent the e-mail to me!

On realising his error, Dr Mintoff phoned me and entreated me to ignore the e-mail, rather than passing it on to the PN media, as I had actually already done. I replied that I will have to see. After discussing the issue with the relevant PN official, it was decided that the e-mail would be ignored - come se non fosse niente! A few minutes after this decision was taken, a very perturbed Toni Abela also contacted me by phone and entreated me to behave like a gentleman by not taking advantage of a genuine mistake.

I assured Dr Abela that the decision not to reveal the contents of the e-mail had by then been taken.

I am not recalling this in order to ask readers to judge whether I did the right thing or not but to assure Dr Muscat that I never considered the phone calls from Dr Mintoff and Dr Abela as useless attempts at "buying" me.