In a fresh twist to the ongoing saga, Nationalist MP Franco Debono yesterday spilled the beans on an incident involving a former party candidate who allegedly accused him of sending an anonymous letter.
The incident happened in 2009 when the former candidate told Edgar Galea Curmi, the Prime Minister’s head of secretariat, of his suspicion that Dr Debono may have been linked to an anonymous letter that scuppered his electoral chances in 2003.
Speaking to The Times yesterday, Dr Debono said the incident caused him “untold harm” because it happened at a time when Mr Galea Curmi had not yet met him, despite his having been elected to Parliament a year earlier.
In 2003 election candidate Herman Schiavone was forced to withdraw his candidature on the fifth electoral district – the same one contested by Dr Debono – after an anonymous letter alleged he was involved in some wrongdoing.
Subsequently, Dr Schiavone did not contest the 2008 election but later started showing an active interest in becoming a candidate again.
According to Dr Debono, soon after he was appointed Parliamentary Assistant in the Office of the Prime Minister last year, Mr Galea Curmi had told him in passing that a year earlier Dr Schiavone had spoken to him about the anonymous letter incident.
“Sending an anonymous letter is despic-able, but it is also unjust to wrongly blame somebody else as Herman Schiavone seems to have done,” Dr Debono said, adding that he insisted the party take action to address the allegation.
When contacted, Dr Schiavone said he had no comment to make.
“I was irked because Edgar only told me a year after the allegation was made to him and because the party did not seem to have taken the matter seriously,” Dr Debono said.
The incident, he added, put into perspective a front-page article that had appeared in the General Workers’ Union daily l-orizzont, sometime in 2009, claiming the Nationalist Party was pushing Dr Schiavone’s candidature in the fifth district to unseat Dr Debono.
The MP said he had decided to spill the beans after PN secretary general Paul Borg Olivier said he found Dr Debono’s behaviour (the threat to withdraw parliamentary support) unacceptable and that what he was doing was “music to Labour’s ears”.
Dr Debono insisted that Dr Borg Oliver knew that the anonymous letter incident had caused him harm and the party had failed to take the appropriate action.
“I am not outspoken, as some say, and keep a lot of things to myself; but when I saw that the party had dragged its feet on the matter I reported the incident to the police earlier this year,” Dr Debono said.
Rebutting Dr Borg Olivier’s comment, the MP added: “What is music to Labour’s ears is the situation in the law courts, the prisons and the need for reform in the justice sector that impacts the daily lives of people.”
He added that Dr Borg Olivier had been visiting him at home when the Prime Minister promised he would split the home affairs and justice portfolios by year’s end.