The case involving Toni Abela was scandalous and continued to show the Labour Party’s true colours, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi said yesterday.

Addressing a political activity in St Paul’s Bay, Dr Gonzi piled more pressure on Labour leader Joseph Muscat to sack Dr Abela, who is deputy leader for party affairs, following the airing of more recordings of a conversation he had about incidents that occurred at the Attard PL club.

Dr Gonzi said Dr Abela could not only been heard saying that he intervened with a Labour policeman not to press charges over a fight at the club but it now also resulted that he was concealing a drug case.

“This is shocking and puts Dr Abela in a more untenable position,” he said.

He noted that if, when still in opposition, Labour was willing to discriminate between Labourites and Nationalists one can only imagine what would happen if it were in power.

Addressing those who were still undecided whether to vote for the Nationalist Party again, Dr Gonzi said that a wrong decision might put the country in serious risk and neutralise all the achievements made over the past years.

He acknowledged that a person might be hurt because he did not get something he expected from the government but Dr Gonzi insisted that his party could certainly not be accused of not moving the country ahead.

Under the PN, the country moved forward and everyone reaped the benefits, he said, adding that, on the contrary, whenever Labour was in power the country moved backwards.

Dr Gonzi said that the PN was again promising another five years of progress, job creation and state-of-the art education and healthcare. The PN was the only real guarantee for the country to remain on the right course, he said.