Urban Development and Roads Minister Jesmond Mugliett has filed another writ for libel against Labour leader Alfred Sant, in connection with a news conference Dr Sant gave outside Castille on Tuesday when, the minister said, Dr Sant had involved him in the supervision contract awarded in connection with the rebuilding of Manwel Dimech bridge.

Mr Mugliett said the company – Sant and Mugliett – which Dr Sant had referred to, had nothing to do with the bridge rebuilding. In fact, Sant and Mugliett was not set up to conduct business. Dr Sant knew that the company had no involvement in the bridge project.

The supervisory works contract for the bridge had been awarded to a consortium formed by a German-Maltese joint venture. He had no connection with that joint venture, Mr Mugliett said.

He pointed out that Dr Sant had not accepted an invitation, made to him 158 days ago, to meet the technical people involved in the project, to ask them whatever he needed to know. Neither had MLP deputy leader Charles Mangion, as chairman of parliament’s public accounts committee, accepted a call to investigate, through the auditor general, the allegations Dr Sant had made.

Mr Mugliett said this was the fourth libel suit he has filed against Dr Sant. Two others are pending, one against the MLP’s president and secretary general, the other against One News newsroom employees Miriam Dalli and Charlon Gouder.

Also yesterday, Minister Mugliett complained to the Malta Press Ethics Commission, the Institute of Journalists and the Journalists’ Committee about the Labour Party's television newsroom.

The minister complained that One News and one of its journalists had overstepped all limits and journalistic ethics in their behaviour towards him.

Among others things, Minister Mugliett said the newsroom had failed to publish a statement to correct inaccuracies about him, and a journalist had then acted intrusively, then arrogantly and with a lack of ethics towards him.