As part of an ongoing and desperate attempt to discredit and taint Azzjoni Nazzjonali (“Things I have noticed” TMIS, 4 November), Daphne Caruana Galizia’s characteristic petulant, verbose and intemperate piece took the Cana Movement to task merely because I addressed that movement’s national conference on healthy marriages.

Ms Caruana Galizia asked whether the Cana Movement had taken leave of its senses because I had the gall in my capacity as president of Azzjoni Nazzjonali’s National Executive to address the conference from the floor during the time allotted to members of the audience to air their views.

The truth is that our party, like all the other political parties received a blanket e-mail invitation providing full details on said conference from the Cana Movement’s secretary, where we were asked to highlight this event among our members. Considering this to be a worthy pro-family initiative, I was delegated by the party’s national executive to attend this gathering.

What is indeed shameful is how a person of Caruana Galizia’s ilk has the sheer nerve to comment about a conference and the movement organising it, when she vigorously opposes all that the Cana Movement - and the Church from which that movement draws its inspiration - stands for. While Caruana Galizia bellows in favour of divorce, the Cana Movement rightly defends the indissoluble marriage bond; while Caruana Galizia proposes “marriage” between people of the same gender, the Cana Movement rightly holds that marriage by its very nature can only occur between persons of different genders.

This said it is opportune to rectify some of the barefaced untruths Caruana Galizia has penned such as her delirium that Azzjoni Nazzjonali would “ rather see women stay at home and raise 100 children than go to work and raise two or three”. Contrary to what this poor deluded columnist asserts, Azzjoni Nazzjonali is a pro-family party that, mindful of the current socio-economic circumstances the country faces, has absolutely nothing against women entering the labour market.

In contrast to Caruana Galizia’s skewed feminist views, we also believe that the State should also recognise the woman’s role as wife, mother and educator as Catholic social teaching clearly delineates.

Her other canard that Azzjoni Nazzjonali is a “far-right party” merely confirms her penchant for frenetic ranting rather than coherent logical thought. No “far right party” publicly proclaims its Christian inspiration, while simultaneously opposing the size, scope and influence of the State in economic and political matters as Azzjoni Nazzjonali has done since its inception. Ms Caruana Galizia should really go back to school and take an O level in Political Studies before making such ridiculous assertions.

Yet the dear lady reserved the best part of her incoherent rambling towards the end of her “piece”, and again adulterates, twists and subverts the truth about AN. The party does not – and has never – sent out “negative messages” about “women, blacks and those who have been plucked from the sea”. Nor are we against “women marrying foreigners and diluting our Maltese culture”. These figments of Caruana Galizia’s fertile if wholly predictable imagination need to be laid to rest once and for all. Azzjoni Nazzjonali is a party that through its statute reserves an automatic seat on its national executive for the president of its women’s section and is led by a medical doctor who has been assisting women for the better part of 30 years. So much for the anti-woman stance Caruana Galizia falsely attributes to our party.

As for the rest of the garbage she penned, one can only re-state what AN’s position has always been since its inception; AN is not against blacks, pinks, yellows or browns but opposes the disordered influx of people resulting from illegal immigration in all its forms and guises, and which we consider to be a violation of our country’s sovereignty and its territorial integrity. Opposing the disordered and illegal influx of foreigners into one’s country is not tantamount to hating persons of a different race. If Caruana Galizia fails to understand this, then she would be well advised to think again.

Furthermore, being opposed to marriages of convenience that have served as a vehicle for illicit entry and residence in sovereign States has nothing to do with women marrying foreigners. Our party’s general secretary is the product of a mixed marriage! Further comment would be superfluous.

Dr Attard is president of the Executive Council of Azzjoni Nazzjonali.