Maltasong board chairman Robert Abela filed no less than two libel writs against Labour website maltastar.com in less than a week, but he cannot end the dispute caused by Fabrizio Faniello’s and Malta’s poor showing at the Eurovision song contest.
In his suit, Mr Abela claimed that maltastar’s allegation he was drunk during the contest’s final night was untrue, libellous and defamatory. He is also asking for damages.
Mr Abela has already sued his predecessor Grace Borg for making the same allegation when she returned to Malta after the contest, in the middle of a huge row with Mr Abela and Culture Minister Francis Zammit Dimech at the airport.
But no less than three affidavits, of which The Malta Independent on Sunday has copies, not only claim that Mr Abela had a drink in his hand during the contest but also make a series of other damaging allegations about Mr Abela’s behaviour throughout that fateful night.
One of the persons who made the affidavit claimed that she sent an angry SMS message to Mr Abela when the result became known and told him: “Thank you for f... Malta and Fabrizio. Are you proud of yourself for what you did?”
Ten minutes later, she said she received an SMS message from Mr Abela’s Greek mobile phone in which she claims he told her: “Don’t interfere, you whore.”
The three people also claim that Mr Abela told them he had had an argument with Fabrizio just before the contest, but Fabrizio totally denied this in a statement he gave to maltastar.
In further damaging statements, Mr Abela was reported to have told maltastar that while it was true he never attended a Maltasong Board meeting in Grace Borg’s time, it was not true he boycotted the meetings because he expected to take her place as head of the board.
He also told maltastar that he is a friend of the minister and “if I wanted to become a chairperson, I had all the means to get what I wanted. I could have gone to the minister and asked him for it.”
When he was chosen instead of Ms Borg, Mr Abela told The Times he was going “to pick up the pieces after Grace” but friends of Ms Borg asked: where are the pieces now?
Mr Abela also explained to maltastar why this year’s delegation was the largest ever, with seven more delegates than last year’s, which was led by Ms Borg. Mr Abela justified this by saying the members of the board spent three months working very hard and making sacrifices and they were taken all to Greece not as a reward for their hard work but because they all had different tasks to do in Athens.
Ms Borg told the Toni Abela programme on Super One that she decided to resign from the board when the minister appointed his driver, Joe Dalmas, a former repairer of fridges, to the board.
The last straw was when there a controversy arose regarding the participation or otherwise of foreign composers in the contest. She had sent the draft rules and regulations to the minister who after reviewing them sent them back to Mr Dalmas.
The minister has been very supportive of Mr Abela throughout the post-Eurovision row but it is now time for the minister to state why he is being so supportive.