Two Sundays ago this newspaper published an article that rubbed both the General Workers Union and the Labour Party the wrong way. This was not the first time we had done so, nor, we are certain, will it be the last.

The article ran along the lines that the government was seeking a quick conclusion to the collective agreement it was negotiating with the civil service because, our well-placed sources inform us, there is a fear that the negotiations would have to start again from scratch should the Labour Party emerge victorious in the next general election.

That article, which we continue to stand by, was followed the next week by rights of reply from both the GWU and the Labour Party. The thing with a right of reply under the Press Act, as specified by the GWU in its correspondence with us, is that rights of reply are supposed to be published with the same prominence as the original article.

But the other thing with that is that this is not always observed to the letter, especially when it comes to a front-page article. Such rights of reply are at times, in all newspapers, buried further inside the paper or the letter is simply carried in its correspondence pages.

But this newspaper had the decency, given the fact that the issue is a sensitive one, to carry an article on our front page synthesising the arguments put forward in both letters. The article was titled “GWU, Labour deny putting spokes in wheels of collective agreement”.

The article was fair, fair almost to a fault, and it duly advertised the letters published inside. In the article, we said that we stood by the story and that we would obviously not grant the Labour Party its request to reveal our sources, they should know better than that, and that not even a court order would catalyse us to do so, let alone a mildly threatening letter from a politician.

The issue, as far as we were concerned, was done and dusted.

But when we turned to the editorial page of l-orrizont, the daily newspaper owned by the union in question, on Thursday, we were confronted with a scathing editorial to the effect that this newspaper is in league with ‘GonziPN’, that the story was a mere smokescreen masking the real reasons behind the delay in negotiations and repeated Labour’s call to reveal our sources. Again, they should know better.

Insinuations that this newspaper is a Nationalist Party mouthpiece fall flat on inspection, and our track record, as is well known, relays a very different story.

As a fully independent newspaper – not only in name but, more importantly, in ethos – we have a love/hate relationship with both the country’s main political parties. We call a spade a spade − we make no apologies for that and we will continue to do so without fear or favour from either party.

This is not the first time in recent memory that the newspaper has attacked us. Last September it levelled charges of a concerted strategy between this newspaper, and others, and the governing Nationalist Party as regards public relations for the next general election. As we have said before, if there is any such strategy, it will be announced on this editorial page and nowhere else – and least of all in an antagonistic and insinuating article or editorial in another newspaper as happened this week and last September.

While we are on the subject of rights of reply, it should be noted that, out of pure decency and respect to the GWU and the Labour Party, we had carried their replies on our front page. But when that same paper published an article – a standalone front-page story – on a sick Libyan child who had allegedly been ignored in Malta, we will not go into the merits of the story, the Foreign Affairs Ministry had published a lengthy clarification on the case the same day. There was, however, no mention of the story in yesterday’s issue, let alone on its front page.

To pigeonhole this newspaper with the Nationalist Party is pure nonsense and, again, our track record provides ample evidence of this. Pigeonholing is for pigeons and we are not trained pigeons, unlike our accusers.

We will not be sending a right of reply to the newspaper because we are pretty much certain that it will not be published, and, that said, we will let the matter lie where it is.