Paola's PN councillors Tyrone Muscat and Ivan Bartolo have slammed the locality's mayor Domenic Grima over the decision to close Paola's flea market space, saying that the act was 'illegal and baseless' and calling for him to shoulder responsibility.

Grima had taken a stand and closed off the market space after a dispute regarding its regulation earlier this week.  The Labour mayor also wrote a letter to ministers Chris Cardona, Chris Fearne and Owen Bonnici, and parliamentary secretary Silvio Parnis, asking them to take action regarding the clearing up of market spaces.

It seems that this decision however has since been reversed by the mayor, and the barricades placed in the area had been removed.

The two PN councillors said in a joint statement that they were pleased to see the place open once again, but lambasted the mayor for how he had handled the issue, saying that his actions were "incorrect, without precedent and without proportion".

The councillors said that the mayor has to understand that neither the local council nor the locality itself was his property and that he could not take decisions by himself.  They alleged that the mayor had taken the decision to close the area by himself without involving the council, an action which made his decision "illegal and baseless".

Muscat and Bartolo said that "common sense has won" when the decision was reversed, but they called on Grima to take responsibility for "the fiasco he created".  They said that even though the mayor was shift the blame onto the executive secretary of the council, everybody knows that it was the mayor who was responsible for the decision and nobody else.

The two councillors added that is there are matters which require discussion with market hawkers, then they should be handled in a civil manner which does not endanger the livelihood of these same hawkers, and concluded by calling once again on the mayor to take responsibility for his actions and to cease from trying to hide behind others.