The Labour Party has strongly deplored what it described as “a most vulgar message” conveyed on a website by Andre Carbonaro, personal assistant to and head of the private secretariat of Nationalist MEP David Casa.

The MLP said Mr Carbonaro, in a message on the website facebook.com, likened the Labour Party to condoms. In wording which the MLP described as “obscene, vulgar, in bad taste and full of sexual connotations”, Mr Carbonaro accuses the Labour Party of wanting to eliminate future generations. It said the writing was displayed next to the Nationalist Party's emblem and carried with it the wording “Proud to vote PN”.

Mr Carbonaro was closely linked to the PN, the MLP said. He had contested local elections in Hamrun on behalf of the PN, had worked in the private secretariat of former deputy prime minister Guido de Marco, and also in the private secretariat of Minister Austin Gatt.

Mr Casa, it said, should condemn the vulgarity and take action against it and say what steps he will take against Mr Carbonaro. The Nationalist Party should also say whether this vulgarity was part of the campaign being waged at present, against the Labour leadership and against the party in general.

If Mr Casa did not remove Mr Carbonaro, the MLP added, the PN leader and general secretary should take steps to do so.

In a counter statement, Mr Casa said the MLP was acting as if it had discovered America. This joke had been making the rounds through sms’s and emails for months. Mr Carbonaro's personal page was supposed to be accessible only to his friends.

On reading the write up, any reader could immediately see this was a joke, Mr Casa said. Did anyone in the Labour Party, he asked, condemn the Labour leader's description of the Nationalist budget as viagra? Did anyone ask the Labour leader to resign? The MLP leader's description had not been made on facebook.com but on the national station, in parliament.

Just months ago, Mr Casa added, the Labour leader had made jokes about the Prime Minister at a mass meeting in Birzebbuga. Mr Casa said everything should be put in its proper context. He had read the joke, he said, and asked Mr Carbonaro to remove it from the website. We should be talking about serious matters, not about jokes, Mr Casa added.