The behaviour of the Nationalist Party about the financial abuses at Mosta local council when the PN was in the majority was giving a clear indication of how far the PN was ready to defend the incompetence, lack of transparency and corruption which under the PN had spread from top to bottom, the Labour Party’s information office said.

The admission of the Nationalist former mayor himself, Joe DeMartino, that he knew that the council’s executive secretary was abusing the council’s finances, roundly justified the Labour Party’s call that the former mayor himself should assume the responsibility for his behaviour and resign, the MLP said.

It was not enough that, according to the former mayor, he had drawn, verbally, the executive secretary’s attention to the abuses – if the former mayor truly wanted to stop the abuses he should have done as the Labour mayor who succeeded him had done, and passed the matter to the police, called an extraordinary meeting of the council and taken a collective decision, as has happened.

The Nationalist former mayor had not only not done this, at the same time that he knew that the executive secretary was abusing the council’s finances he chose to propose that the executive secretary be given a full performance bonus and that his contract be renewed, the Labour Party said.