Nationalist Party candidate Pippo Psaila denied he had used the database of the Malta Olympic Committee for partisan reasons, as claimed by Labour Party spokesmen. He said he had been involved in the sector for 31 years during which he had come to know and made contact with many sportsmen in Malta.

He said his critics in the Labour Party, which had reduced sports to a shambles, were not in a position to give lessons on sports. Labour in government had politicised sports and even in the Malta Football Association there had been a partisan dispute.

Mr Psaila said sports was an important part of the Nationalist Party’s agenda because sports helped to develop people and gave an identity to the country. That was why he had accepted to be a PN candidate at the election, because the PN wanted to improve sports.