PN MP George Pullicino asked newly appointed parliamentary secretary for health Chris Fearne in parliament this evening whether the government would be investigating the former health minsiter's claim that an e-mail he sent to the media after he handed in his resignation to the prime minister did not reach its destination.

Dr Fearne said that the question has nothing to do with IVF and therefore did not reply to his question. The two sides were debating an issue related to IVF a few seconds before the question was posed to the government by the Opposition.

Earlier

Former health minister Godfrey Farrugia’s claim that the email he sent to announce his resignation to the media mysteriously disappeared before reaching its intended recipients is yet to be publicly addressed by the government.

Dr Farrugia had made this claim in an interview with The Malta Independent on Sunday.

The minister’s sudden resignation from Cabinet on 29 March – he had been offered another portfolio, but insisted that he did not wish to occupy another Cabinet position – was inadvertently revealed by his partner, MP Marlene Farrugia, who uploaded a copy of his resignation letter on her Facebook page. She subsequently clarified that she did so after she confirmed that Dr Farrugia had sent the letter to the media, and with his consent.

Dr Farrugia confirmed his partner’s version of events in the interview, but also said that he was perplexed at how the email, which he sent through his gov.mt account, failed to reach any of its intended recipients. He insisted that he was certain that he did send the email from his tablet computer just outside the Office of the Prime Minister shortly after he handed in his resignation.

IT experts had explained to The Malta Independent that emails sent through the government’s network could be stopped dead in their tracks and deleted from the infrastructure’s backend before they reach their recipients, but warned that a person’s email account needed to be closely monitored for this to be possible.

Asked about this, Dr Farrugia said “I don’t know what to say. I have no idea what happened to the email after it left my outbox.”

Claims that the government monitors politicians’ communication are not new to Malta: in 2011, in the run-up to the divorce referendum, Education Minister Evarist Bartolo and former MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando had filed a police report in which they expressed suspicions that their mobile phones were being tapped.

While no police report appears to have been filed in this case, this does not prevent the government from launching its own inquiry into the matter, as it has done in many other cases.

But in the absence of any official statement, one can only assume that the government is yet to pursue such a course of action.