The Nationalist Party this morning said the government should stop using the Department of Information to attack MPs who were elected by the people.

Addressing a press conference, PN spokesman on Citizen Rights and Communications Clyde Puli said the government was using the DOI in a manipulative way and treating is as the Labour Party’s information office. No democratic countries did this, he said. It was only under Prime Minister Joseph Muscat that such a government department, paid for by the public, was being used as a political tool.

Citing a number of recent examples, Mr Puli said the Opposition was being insulted by the DOI whenever it made a political argument. People expected the government to issue a mature reply and state the facts instead or resorting to insults. This was unacceptable, he said. On some occasions, the government was using DOI press releases to attack the Opposition on certain issues before it had even made its arguments.

In August there were no less than eight times where the government did this and accused the Opposition of being extremist and negative despite the press release not being a reply to something that the PN had said.

“The worst example was when the DOI issued a press release to insult PN Deputy Leader Beppe Fenech Adami last Wednesday. Taxpayer money should be used well and not as a means for Ministers to attack other MPs that were elected democratically.” Mr Puli noted that the government had been caught lying in a DOI-issued press release on the shootout by former Home Affairs Minister Manuel Mallia’s driver.

PN election candidate Justin Fenech said the PM and his ministers had every right to pass comments on Opposition MPs but should not use the DOI – a supposedly autonomous department - to do this.

The DOI belongs to everyone, not just the PL, he said. DOI employees were doing a good job and it was unfair that they were being thrown under a bad light because of what the government was doing. “The DOI should be a department from where people get all the truth and not manipulated information.”