Political electoral campaigns, wherever they are fought, are certainaly not the ideal time for the average voter to digest all the things that are being said and done. There is such political hype around that most things simply go over people’s heads or are only artificially absorbed.

Maltese general elections are no exception.

As we approach the half-way mark of this legislature, it would be a very productive exercise to revisit a particular interview that occurred in the run-up to the last election, an interview which many consider to be one of the highlights of that period but which may have been buried under Labour’s lavish campaign.

The interview was with Anġlu Farrugia, conducted by Herman Grech and published in The Sunday Times of Malta on February 3, 2013. But first I will try to put it in its proper context. Farrugia had just been unceremoniously ousted from his position as deputy leader of the PL by Joseph Muscat. The general election was only five weeks away.

Being in that vantage point for the whole period of Muscat’s leadership, nearly five years, Farrugia was the proverbial ‘horse’s mouth’ about the situation obtaining in the PL at that crucial time. He had access to the inner goings-on, barring only the sancta sanctorum, colloquially known as Level 4 of the Ċentru Nazzjonali Laburista at Ħamrum. That area was only accessible to people who, it is now widely believed, were involved in the wheeling and dealing involving the party finances.

I will now quote parts of that interview, which probably would have been glanced over superficially at the time and by now would have been totally forgotten.

HG: Are you saying the Labour Party is becoming more capitalist?

AF: When you see certain people getting close to the party … if they’re genuine they’re welcome. But I fear very much several people who wield power in the country – big businessmen and contractors – I don’t feel comfortable getting close to them for a number of reasons.

HG: Are these people getting close to the Labour Party?

AF: Yes, there are several of these who are close to the party.

HG: Big contractors?

AF: Big contractors …

HG: …who were previously associated with the Nationalist Party?

AF: Wherever they were, the point remains is that the principal value of the Labour Party should be the lower and working class and, why not, even the middle class.

HG: Some believe the Labour Party is morphing into a cut-and-paste version of the Nationalist Party in the 1990s – more capitalist, comfortable with contractors.

AF: God forbid it becomes like that. And I fear it will become like that.

HG: Are these same contractors financing the party?

AF: I can’t tell you because I was never involved with these people, although I know they are close to certain people involved in the party’s finances or the campaign’s organisation.

Can anyone today, hand on heart, fail to acknowledge that these comments were eye-opening enough to set everyone thinking about the then upcoming decision and prompt them to act accordingly?

Now, even with the benefit of hindsight, we can place all these declarations in the context of what happened in the past two-and-a-half years, with one very serious case after another, in spite of all undertakings and solemn promises made publicly by Muscat and his Labour Party prior to the election.

A recent editorial in this paper made a bold statement: “[This] Labour Government [is] bent on selling every piece of Malta for money.”

Isn’t this statement not enough to set you thinking that what Farrugia stated in that interview was truly revealing?

Let us read this interview over and over again, diligently digest it and always keep it at the back of our minds when analysing what this government has been up to so far and what it still has in store for the remainder of the legislature.

Then, when the time is ripe, we shall act accordingly.

Kristy Debono is the Nationalist Party’s spokeswoman for competitiveness and economic growth.

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