Civil Liberties Minister Helena Dalli this afternoon resisted calls to remove Cyrus Eneger as her personal consultant, saying he has already paid for his mistake by withdrawing from the elections to the European Parliament.
Replying to a series of questions by Times of Malta, Dr Dalli condemned Cyrus Engerer for distributing pornographic material and threatening his former boyfriend. However, she said that she had no intention of removing him from his government consultancy job.
“Mr Engerer has given me a lot of important advice and I have no intention of removing him”, she said.
Asked whether this was a final decision she said:
“For now this is my decision. In the future we will see.”
Dr Dalli said that she did not receive any order from the Prime Minister to remove Mr Engerer from his job.
“As if....of course not!” she said when asked.
Mr Engerer was appointed by the Labour government as consultant on civil liberties. He also chairs the LGBT council.
He is also engaged by Home Affairs Minister Manuel Mallia as his consultant on EU Funds.
PN REACTS
In a reaction, the Nationalist Party said Dr Dalli, like the prime minister, in a case involving somebody at the core of the Labour Party, did not have the moral courage to take a decision based on what was right.
Like the prime minister, the minister was not understanding that in virtue of the course sentence, Mr Engerer now had a direct conflict between his crime and his role as government consultant.
This was a serious political shortcoming that showed how the government had lost its moral compass and was choosing the bad over what was good.
Cyrus Engerer, Joseph Muscat's champion on gay rights, had been found guilty of a crime against a gay person and his position as a government consultant on LGBT was therefore untenable.