The Nationalist Party considers the hunting issue as "closed", since the people voted about it in a referendum, Nationalist Party leader Simon Busuttil said this morning. 

Speaking at Siġġiewi, he said Labour was spreading false rumours about the PN and hunting, claiming that the party's proposals on the introduction of the propositive referendum would mean a new referendum. 

But, Dr Busuttil said, hunters only needed to ask themselves: Under whom was the hunting referendum held, under Joseph Muscat or Simon Busuttil? 

Hunters, he said, should no longer allow Dr Muscat to use them for votes, simply so that he and his clique of corrupt people could continue to live it out in Castille.

The PN, he said, always respected the people's will and would continue to do so.

Dr Busuttil also referred to today's Sunday Times report about more funds having been deposited in an account held by Brian Tonna in Pilatus Bank, from which kickbacks from the sale of passports were allegedly given to Keith Schembri, the prime minister's chief of staff.  

He said that the prime minister was either incompetent in not realising what was going on under his nose, or else there was something else. 

"The prime minister is not stupid as to not to know what was happening, and I, therefore, suspect that he knew everything but he did nothing because it suited him," Dr Busuttil said. 

In either case, the prime minister's place was no longer in politics, he said.  

Once he had not left, it was the people's duty to unseat him at the general election, he said.