Sliema council to meet on Monday to discuss future

Sliema local councillors will meet on Monday evening to discuss a way forward after the government gave them 10 days to get their act together or the council would be dissolved.

Deputy mayor Cyrus Engerer told timesofmalta.com yesterday morning that five councillors wrote a letter to the executive secretary saying they were unable to contact the mayor and planned to convene an urgent meeting today.

By law it is the prerogative of the mayor to call an urgent council meeting but it can also be set if the majority of councillors make a request to the executive secretary. In this case, the letter of request was signed by five of the 11 councillors: Mr Engerer, Nicolai Gauci, Marianna Aquilina, Sandra Camilleri and Patrick Pace.

The Times spoke to Mayor Johanna Gonzi in the early afternoon who explained she was unable to answer the phone in the morning because, being an anaesthetist, she was in surgery at the time.

Dr Gonzi said she regretted that Mr Engerer had tried to give the impression she was somewhat unreachable or hiding.“I am certainly not hiding, I am in Malta and I am working... I was doing a C-section. In the morning I operate and I cannot let go of the patients to answer my phone,” she said, pointing out that she had been in contact with the council secretary on Wednesday evening.

Councillor Sandra Camilleri said she too had tried hard to contact the mayor since Wednesday but to no avail. She was concerned that meeting on Monday would be “too late” and said she could not understand why the council could not meet today.

Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi sent a letter to the Sliema councillors on Wednesday setting down a 10-day deadline before which internal problems that included lack of cooperation among themselves, had to be ironed out. The warning followed a report drawn up by the Director for Local Government that recommended the dissolution of the council as its operations were being disrupted by criminal proceedings being faced by four councillors. The report also flagged lack of cooperation among councillors, such that the council could not function as it should.“We will be meeting on Monday at 5.30 p.m. and the agenda will be the letter we received... We will be discussing what can be done,” the mayor said.When asked what could effectively happen to save the council at this stage, she said that would be discussed at the meeting and preferred not to comment further at this stage.

When contacted after The Times spoke to the mayor, Mr Engerer said it was “very convenient” for the government to dissolve the Sliema council at this stage. The problems had emerged years ago and were not being tackled, so why now, he asked. He believed the government was doing this to gain political advantage to win a Nationalist majority in the upcoming local council elections and to garner more support as the general election was approaching.

Mr Engerer had resigned from the PN and joined Labour after the Prime Minister voted against divorce legislation in Parliament despite a positive referendum result. He remained on the council as an independent member.

The Labour Party spokesman for local government, Stefan Buontempo, also accused the Prime Minister of playing partisan games with the council.

Problems in Sliema emerged long ago and, as a result, the PN had lost its majority representation, Dr Buontempo noted.

Now that the March local council elections were around the corner, the government wanted to dissolve the council. As a result, the Sliema council election, scheduled for March 2013, would take place this year. This could help the PN win the council elections, he said.

In a statement, the government rejected the PL’s claims, saying that should the Sliema council be dissolved, this would only be done for the benefit of the locality.

The letter to the council was sent following a report by the Department of Local Government and in line with the law, the Office of the Prime Minister pointed out.