Malta’s outgoing EU ambassador told Nationalist MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando he was prepared to resign before Monday’s vote but the backbencher led him to believe he would not vote against him, according to Richard Cachia Caruana.

In a rare wide-ranging interview with The Sunday Times, Mr Cachia Caruana says he went to Dr Pullicino Orlando’s home earlier this month where he was given a very warm welcome.

“I told him: ‘If you believe you should vote for the motion, just tell me and I’ll leave.’ His response was: ‘If I didn’t vote against Austin Gatt when he did me so much harm, why should you think I would vote against you?’”

Mr Cachia Caruana says Dr Pullicino Orlando deliberately misled several government officials, including the Prime Minister, by repeatedly saying he had “no issues” regarding the opposition’s motion.

“His intention all along was to vote in the most damaging way to me and to the party... to hurt or humiliate in the most public way possible.”

Mr Cachia Caruana also gives his account of the final days of the 2008 election campaign during which accusations of “corruption” were levelled by Labour against Dr Pullicino Orlando.

After initially supporting the MP, Mr Cachia Caruana says his view changed when Alfred Sant produced a contract in relation to Dr Pullicino Orlando’s land in Mistra where an application had been submitted for construction of a disco.

“When I met my family that evening or the next day I said: Do not give Dr Pullicino Orlando more than your last vote.”

Mr Cachia Caruana says the PN would have handled the issue differently if it knew before what it knew at the end of the campaign.

“We were caught in a situation where we trusted somebody who, even if he didn’t lie, didn’t tell the whole truth either – and this misled people,” he says, drawing parallels with what happened last week.

“I regret to say Alfred Sant probably summed him up correctly.”

In the interview, Mr Cachia Caruana also criticises backbencher Jesmond Mugliett, who abstained from Monday’s vote, for using him “in part, as a proxy for the Prime Minister and in part a proxy for [columnist] Daphne Caruana Galizia.”

On Ms Caruana Galizia, he says: “I admire her for having the guts to say what she thinks and express herself so eloquently.”

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.