Muscat calls for resignation of Gonzi’s chief of staff

The Prime Minister’s head of secretariat, Edgar Galea Curmi, has come under fire from Labour leader Joseph Muscat for making a phone call to the Police Commissioner about an ongoing investigation.

Dr Muscat said Mr Galea Curmi should resign immediately over the phone call and, if not, he should be sacked by the Prime Minister because this amounted to interference and should not be tolerated in a democratic society. Mr Galea Curmi is the godfather of Sliema deputy mayor Cyrus Engerer, whose father was arrested for marijuana possession days after his son resigned from the Nationalist Party.

Cyrus Engerer, who felt the police raid on his father was politically motivated, expressed this concern to Mr Galea Curmi last Friday when the two ran into each other in Mdina while they were speaking to each other on the phone.

“Cyrus told me he was speaking to me as a friend because his father had been arrested. This was the first time I learnt about Christopher Engerer’s arrest. Cyrus told me his father’s lawyer, Carlo Bisazza, had told him ‘he was to expect such incidents now that he had taken the plunge and resigned from the PN’,” Mr Galea Curmi said in a statement issued by the Department of Information.

“I told him I was only hearing about this incident from him and immediately phoned the Commissioner of Police, in front of Cyrus in a way that he could hear every single detail of the phone call.”

Mr Galea Curmi said Police Commissioner John Rizzo told him the report on Christopher Engerer had been filed before his son’s resignation from the PN and categorically denied any relationship whatsoever between the resignation and the arrest.

Mr Galea Curmi then asked Mr Rizzo to meet Dr Bisazza “and explain the facts to him” but Mr Rizzo decided not to follow this request.

Mr Galea Curmi released his statement after details of the phone call emerged during a press conference given by Mr Rizzo.

Asked by journalists, Mr Rizzo confirmed the phone call took place but said he did not feel comfortable meeting the lawyer because he did not feel he owed any explanations and believed this blurred the line of his role.

In his statement, Mr Galea Curmi admitted he was close to the Engerer family.

“I am deeply upset by the way certain elements of the media are manipulating two unfortunate incidents of people I deeply care for with the sole aim of defaming the Prime Minister and the people around him.”

He said he had instructed his lawyer to institute libel proceedings against MaltaToday, describing their stories as “malicious”.