Perhaps out of some misplaced sense of respect for the man that Martin Scicluna once purported to be, I have, to date, refrained from ever answering one of his many outbursts. I (and a surprising number of his contemporaries who reached out to me) know that his remaining vestiges of what once passed as influence depend on him backing Joseph Muscat, Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi publicly and to the hilt.

I have never intended to add to the attention-seeking spectacle his column has become, however, this time I feel I must set at least his record straight. His piece ‘Metsola’s 17 Black” (November 28) seems to have been prompted in reaction to my opinion piece, possibly by his incorrect assumption that I was “staying silent about the undemocratic attack on the rule of law in Hungary”.

I shall not indulge in a verbal ping-pong but I would very much like him (and any member of the reading public, who having been fed his false negativity, might actually have believed it) to watch my speech in the European Parliament last September (https://www.facebook.com/roberta.metsola/videos/689258358122378/). This is when I stood up and made a very strong statement about Hungary, during the plenary session of the European Parliament, with Prime Minister Viktor Orban himself in the chamber.

Scicluna, much like he missed all the signs with his blind defence of the American University of Malta, clearly also missed this. A simple Google search would have spared him the embarrassment.

This ignorance of facts and intellectual dishonesty puts his whole tirade in its true light.

For someone who still dines out on his claim of having been in charge of a nuclear battery in West Germany during the Cold War, he seems to be pretty hasty in firing off salvoes at the slightest provocation. I wonder what the provocation was in this case... 17 Black has got him, and those he now spends his time defending, pretty hot under the collar.

Time for him to do the honourable thing and apologise.

This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece

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