An argument over politics on Thursday morning took a somewhat heated turn and ended up with a man suffering a badly bruised eye that needed sutures, a court heard yesterday.

The incident was sparked off when Salvatore Baldacchino, a Nationalist Party supporter, encountered “customer care” employee Luciano Galea in a Paceville club at around 4 a.m.

Mr Baldacchino alleged that Mr Galea punched him in the face purely because he supported the party in government but Mr Galea contended that he never hit him. Mr Galea said the victim had turned up at the club with a bloodied face and he refused him entry because of the state he was in, sources said. Mr Galea is pleading not guilty to seriously injuring Mr Baldacchino, breaking his spectacles and working as a bouncer without a licence and breaching the peace.

In pleas on bail, Police Inspector Godwin Scerri said that Mr Galea had no licence to operate as a bouncer, to which Mr Scerri – standing in the dock dressed in a black suit and shirt – said that he was not a bouncer but was in customer care.

Lawyers Shazoo Ghaznavi and Robert Galea argued that their client had no convictions for the past 20 years meaning that the last offence he committed was when he was a teenager.

Magistrate Giovanni Grixti granted him bail against a personal guarantee of €3,000.