The Prime Minister yesterday launched an attack on Labour leader Joseph Muscat and his deputy, saying they should both step down over their failure to report a case of alleged drug trafficking at the party’s Safi club.

At a meeting in Naxxar, Lawrence Gonzi leveraged on an interview Dr Muscat gave to The Sunday Times yesterday admitting that both he and Toni Abela had made mistakes in relation to the case.

Dr Gonzi said: “Dr Muscat cannot take action against Dr Abela because they were in this together. If Toni goes, Joseph has to go too.”

In his interview with The Sunday Times, Dr Muscat admitted making a “mistake” when he failed to report the matter but insisted he never lied to reporters when he said he had no knowledge about the case because there was confusion about whether journalists were talking of the Attard or Safi clubs.

Although he defended Dr Abela’s actions as “genuine” and praised him for standing up to Labour’s diehard Lorry Sant in the past, Dr Muscat said: “If he was a general election candidate he would have had to withdraw his candidature.”

In Mqabba, Dr Muscat insisted he would keep working for a positive campaign, which promoted unity and did not pass judgements on people “on the basis of the colour of their faces”.

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