A Facebook page that fomented hatred towards Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi and the Nationalist Party stopped operating at 3pm yesterday after “orders from above”, the administrator of the site announced yesterday.
Initially, the page was supposed to have been removed at 11pm yesterday, but the site administrator later informed the page fans that “they had been informed” that the closure had been brought forward to 3pm.
A short note by the administrator said that the page “had been forced” to close down, but it was said that another page under another name would have been set up. In fact, before noon yesterday, a new page called “We disagree with Gonzi and PN” was set up – with the same logo, same mission and same attempt to denigrate all that is connected with the government and the Prime Minister. The only thing that was changed was the word “hate”, which has now become “disagree”.
The story about the Facebook page, called “We hate Gonzi and PN”, was broken by The Malta Independent on Sunday last Sunday, and picked up by the Nationalist Party media on Monday.
The TMIS story said that two Labour MPs, Joseph Sammut and Luciano Busuttil, were members of the group.
Dr Sammut yesterday contacted this newspaper to say that he had never been part of the group. When told that his name and photo in the list of members led to his profile on Facebook, he said that it’s possible that someone had used computer tricks to add him as a member of this group.
A spokesman for the Labour Party yesterday said that as soon as it was made aware of the existence of the site, “it directed its representatives to pull (out) from the page”. The spokesman said that the site criticises Labour “for not taking a militant approach – let alone spearheading such a Facebook page. Such are our moderate credentials.”
Saying that the PL is against hate-sites, “be they official or unofficial”, the spokesman said that it was hoped that “the PN will dissociate itself too, once and for all, from sites and opinionists, including one that writes in this newspaper, who regularly instigate hate and have long embarked in a continuous hate campaign against Labour, its supporters, leader, his wife, parents and even children.”
Labour MP, Evarist Bartolo, said on Bondiplus last Monday that one could criticise the Nationalist Party and the Prime Minister, but hatred was another matter. Mr Bartolo was commenting on remarks about the page made by Nationalist MP Beppe Fenech Adami during the same programme.
Recently, internet sites fomenting hatred against Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who just before Christmas was attacked in Milan, had also been closed down.
The Facebook page had links to stories against the government and the Prime Minister that have appeared in the Maltese press and gave links to YouTube videos that denigrate the PN and Dr Gonzi. By Friday, the number of members of the page, set up in November, was 153 but since TMIS broke the story the number shot up to over 270 by the time it closed yesterday.
The photo of Dr Gonzi with a big red cross over his face – which was the photo used by the site administrator before the TMIS story was published – had been replaced by a question mark yesterday morning. This same photo is being used on the new page that “disagrees” with, rather than “hates”, the Prime Minister.