A story showing PN MP Jason Azzopardi to be a ‘hypocrite’ will soon emerge, Prime Minister Robert Abela said today, arguing that the MP’s allegations about Mario Cutajar were an attempt to deviate attention.
Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi claimed on Tuesday that a top-level public officer was forced to hand in his resignation after being arrested on “made-up criminal allegations”. Speaking in Parliament on Tuesday, Azzopardi called for the resignation of Principal Permanent Secretary Mario Cutajar for “abuse of power” in connection with the 2013 incident.
Azzopardi said the officer, employed at the Inland Revenue Department, was asked by Cutajar to step down from his role. When he refused, saying he had not done anything wrong, the permanent secretary threatened him with criminal action.
Mario Cutajar categorically denied the allegations levelled against him.
Abela was asked by the press whether, if the allegations are true, he would demand Cutajar’s resignation.
In response, Abela said that Jason Azzopardi knows that, “very soon, he will have a serious problem. He knows there is a serious story coming out about him soon and what he did yesterday was an attempt to deviate attention. In the coming hours, the country will know how Azzopardi is the most hypocritical politician in the country.”
In a right of reply, Azzopardi stated:
"I note that Robert Abela did not deny one iota of what I claimed in Parliament yesterday and which I repeated this morning publicly, about the frame up of an honest public official in April 2013 by Mario Cutajar, a frame up known to Dr Abela at that time since he was the victim's lawyer, rendered more heinous by the fact that Dr Abela continued to shower trust on Mario Cutajar as his Cabinet Secretary, thus continuing the cover up."
"Secondly, I am definitely not aware, as he has falsely claimed, of any "story" about me. The fact that he is threatening an Opposition MP in this desperate way indicates a very immature and insecure PM and shows that the truth is not on his side. The job of a serious Prime Minister is not to invent stories about an Opposition MP and leaking them, but to ensure that the criminals sitting at his Cabinet table face the justice they deserve."