Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi yesterday refused to comment about the latest declarations by Nationalist MP Franco Debono.

Dr Gonzi, touring the Biomalta Campus construction site in San Ġwann and asked about Dr Debono, demanded that the questions be sent by e-mail.

When The Times pointed out that questions had been e-mailed to his office on Tuesday but remained unanswered, Dr Gonzi and his assistants walked away.

Dr Debono is insisting that he should have been chosen as Dr Gonzi’s special delegate rather than MEP Simon Busuttil because he was the catalyst for a shake up within the Nationalist Party.

Nationalist MP Beppe Fenech Adami said such declarations confirmed everything he had said in January about Dr Debono and his ambitions to be appointed minister and, later, Prime Minister.

“Nothing accommodates Franco Debono,” he said.

Dr Busuttil has refused to comment about Dr Debono’s statements. So has PN general secretary Paul Borg Olivier who came under fresh fire by Dr Debono. The Nationalist backbencher said Dr Borg Olivier had not delivered and was recently given a consolation prize by Dr Gonzi, who tasked him with bringing ministers closer to constituents. Dr Debono said this should have been done on Dr Borg Olivier’s own initiative.

Reacting to the criticism levelled at him following his latest statement, Dr Debono said it “hurts to be shown disrespect from those who were proved wrong instead of gratitude for being proved right”.

“As regard the other comments by Beppe Fenech Adami, I had already dismissed them as false and unfounded and they do not merit any further attention from my part,” he said.

“His dangerous assertion that a government should steamroll independently of whether it enjoys a majority in Parliament is tantamount to oligarchy or dictatorship,” he added.

He reiterated that the latest moves by the PN vindicated him, arguing that this was the spirit in which he spoke over the past days.

The political, constitutional and justice reforms that Malta needed and which he and others had been campaigning for, complemented the great reforms piloted by Dr Fenech Adami’s father – former PN leader, Prime Minister and President Eddie Fenech Adami – in the late 1980s and 1990s, Dr Debono said.

“To be in a position to do this I had suggested weeks ago that GonziPN needed to go back to being the people’s PN that it was. That motif has now been taken on board and hailed. I consider it a positive step forward and thank my colleague and friend Simon Busuttil for his invite (to help in his work as a special delegate),” Dr Debono said.

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