Steve Mallia, editor, The Sunday Times (November 15), says I misquoted his publication in my article last Wednesday, about an interview with the Prime Minister he featured on October 28. I wrote that The Sunday Times recorded "the Prime Minister as saying that opposition MPs had sent congratulatory e-mails about the 2008 budget".
According to Mr Mallia the term used by the PM in The Sunday Times was "Opposition members". He quotes the Oxford English Dictionary in the sense that when used in lower case, "member" refers to a "person belonging to a society, team etc. It is not restricted to Members of Parliament".
Mr Mallia's explanation is ingenuous if disappointing.
The Oxford English Dictionary also defines the word "Opposition" (in upper case) as follows: "The principal parliamentary party opposed to that in office". Ergo, members of the Opposition refers to members of Labour's parliamentary party, by definition members of Parliament.
That is how most people understood the quote at reference and how they were meant to understand it. For the sake of correctness, Mr Mallia could perhaps consider what I have already suggested, namely publishing the full transcript of the relevant part of the interview. I am sure Castille would have no objection to that.
While at it, Mr Mallia could perhaps further consider explaining another curious point. According to the published text itself, the Sunday Times interview was carried out on the morning of Monday, October 23, 2007. How come then that the Prime Minister knew already in detail what I would be saying on the evening of that same day in Parliament during my reply to his budget speech?
On that "grey, wet" morning, the Prime Minister according to the interview, said he "believes (that) the content of Dr Sant's budget reaction speech was also worrying. "It was superficial, even dangerous", he says, referring to Dr Sant's overtime proposals..." He then proceeded to give costings about what they would entail. Isn't this weird?
A week earlier, Dr Gonzi had marvelled that Labour came out with its posters on the budget when he was still delivering his budget speech. Readers, I am sure, would be disappointed were the editor of The Sunday Times to leave some reasonable explanation about this greater marvel, also pending.
Steve Mallia writes: I sought to clarify the contents of the Leader of the Opposition's opinion article in The Times because he did, without question, misquote the text of The Sunday Times' interview with the Prime Minister. We said "Opposition members". He said that we said "Opposition MPs". We could argue about semantics all day.