The party is not supreme

I refer to Hermann Schiavone’s comments in the article The Party Is Supreme (July 14).

As a Nationalist member of Parliament I have for the past years campaigned and done my utmost for a culture change in Maltese politics to get in line with all other western democracies.

No, the party is not supreme. The people, the Constitution and Parliament are supreme. We live in a democracy. It is in totalitarian states that the party is supreme. Members of Parliament are not party delegates but representatives of the people elected on a party ticket.

Since The Times has carried Mr Schiavone’s comments, various times without elaborating on the details of the issue, I take the opportunity to give the relevant facts.

L-orizzont of October 20 and 21, 2009, reported that Beppe Fenech Adami and someone else were pushing candidates in my district to oust me from Parliament at the next election, and one of these was Mr Schiavone.

At the time I considered this report not credible since I considered Dr Fenech Adami a friend and as far as I knew Mr Schiavone had left Malta and opened a restaurant in the UK for some years.

I discarded it completely until later I came to know that Mr Schiavone made an unlawful, unfounded and baseless allegation with (the Prime Minister’s head of secretariat) Edgar Galea Curmi, that I or someone else close to another 2003 election candidate in the fifth district might have been behind an anonymous letter sent to him before the 2003 election, something which I categorically denied immediately.

I immediately asked the party to take the necessary steps to safeguard my reputation, and offered to testify before the administrative council, but for months nothing was done, so I had to inform the police for record purposes. I did not ask the police to proceed because I did not want to escalate matters but just to protect my reputation.

But when this allegation started to surface in blogs I again asked the party to take the necessary steps.

It was only then that the party issued a statement urging Mr Schiavone not to present himself as a party candidate and censuring such behaviour as unacceptable and that Mr Schiavone should either withdraw or substantiate his claim in my regard, something which to date he has never done.

This allegation and the party’s inaction for months has caused me untold harm and indirectly caused unrest in the parliamentary group.

I cannot explain the motive except maybe that my popularity in the fifth district and my valid ideas and contributions in Parliament were considered by the restricted clique which has hijacked the PN as a threat to some people’s ministerial and leadership aspirations. Was the Schiavone episode used to clip my wings?

In the last meeting of the PN executive committee I made it clear that I never objected to any candidates in the fifth district, but I only wanted to protect my reputation. So much so that, in the first meeting I had with general secretary Paul Borg Olivier way back in 2008 I proposed candidates in the fifth district myself, including then Żurrieq councillor Melvyn Mangion.

Secondly, the Nationalist Party never approves its candidates four years before a general election as some prospective candidates were pushing the party to do.

Thirdly, The Times should note that besides Mr Schiavone, architect Toni Bezzina, who is Żurrieq PN club president and fifth district representative on the PN executive committee, was also not approved as a candidate. I never objected to Mr Bezzina.