Prime Minister Robert Abela has said that independent MP Rosianne Cutajar must apologise before she can be accepted back into the Labour Party parliamentary group.

In comments to MaltaToday, Abela said that the PL’s parliamentary group had already discussed Cutajar’s return. The next step, he added, would be a joint meeting of the parliamentary group and the PL’s executive.

“If one doesn’t apologise in cases like these, it shows they do not really want to return; so yes, I think an apology is in order,” Abela told the newspaper.

Cutajar had resigned under pressure from the Labour Party following the publication of Whatsapp chats between her and Yorgen Fenech. The chats occurred between June and September 2019, and showed the close relationship that the MP had with Fenech at a time when he was under scrutiny for being the owner of 17 Black. Fenech was, later in November that year, arrested over the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

She had remained in Parliament as an independent MP.

In one exchange that was uncovered, Cutajar told Fenech she would seek a consultancy with the Institute for Tourism Studies to emulate everyone else, presumably from the PL, who was acting like a pig at the trough.