Kindly allow me to pass a comment about the news item entitled: PM should ‘expect trouble’ from the backbench by journalist Stephen Calleja (TMIS, 14 February) about the (alleged) “disgruntlement” expressed on successive occasions by some Nationalist Party backbenchers.

Kindly allow me to pass a comment about the news item entitled: PM should ‘expect trouble’ from the backbench by journalist Stephen Calleja (TMIS, 14 February) about the (alleged) “disgruntlement” expressed on successive occasions by some Nationalist Party backbenchers.

One only hopes that this is not a premeditated strategy, being carried out by a circle of eight or nine parliamentarians, with the (undeclared) aim of causing instability in government with the not so hidden intention of prompting Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi to call (yet another) general election.

MPs should always be loyal to voters, to the party leader and to the party they represent, and if they intend to run for party leadership, they should put their cards on the table and have the decency to say so and publicly declare their intentions.

To my mind, whenever anyone undermines the party administration and the party leadership from within, just because he has not been confirmed or reappointed as a parliamentary secretary or minister, with the expectation of inducing the party leader to a possible electoral defeat, so that the leader would then have been humiliated and even removed, this seems treacherous to me.

Edward Torpiano

FLORIANA