Criminal Lawyer Franco Debono Warns PN Leader That Close Ally Is ‘One Of Labour’s Favourite Toys’
Criminal lawyer and former Nationalist MP Franco Debono has cast serious doubt on the credibility of one of the closest parliamentary allies of Opposition leader Adrian Delia.
In a blogpost, Debono suggested that the Labour Party isn’t resurrecting a mysterious case of alleged wrongdoing attributed to PN MP Hermann Schiavone “because it doesn’t want to break one of its favourite toys”.
The case goes back to 2003, when then Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami refused to allow Schiavone to contest an election after getting wind that the police were investigating the contents of an anonymous letter which alleged wrongdoing on his part. The nature of this letter and the police investigation that followed remain a mystery.
“Why were the police investigating him, what happened to the investigation, and why did [Schiavone] leave Malta before returning as soon as [former minister] Louis Galea lost his parliamentary seat in 2008?” Debono asked. “Instead of speaking about inquiries into other people, Schiavone would do better to illuminate us about the time HE was investigated. He is lucky that there were no blogs back then and that the press weren’t as armed as they are now.”
“Don’t expect the Labour Party to raise these questions! After all, which party will break one of its favourite toys?”
Hermann Schiavone with former PN leader Simon Busuttil
Debono wrote his blog as a response to Schiavone’s comments earlier today, in which he criticised former PN leader Simon Busuttil for going against the party line and declaring his belief that Prime Minister Joseph Muscat owns the Panama company Egrant.
Schiavone urged Busuttil to drop the Egrant story and focus more on bread and butter issues, arguing that the result of last year’s election proves that people don’t care about the allegations against the Prime Minister. However, Debono said Schiavone has no right to jab Busuttil about his electoral failure as he [Schiavone] was the “mascot” of the PN’s crushing defeat last year.
“If there is a person who is synonymous with the election defeat, it is none other than Schiavone himself,” Debono said. “After 30 years of contesting elections, he finally got elected in 2017 when the PN suffered its largest defeat in history, rendering him a mascot of this defeat. On the contrary, Simon Busuttil was a protagonist in several electoral victories for the PN.”
Moreover, Debono warned that Busuttil’s tenure as Opposition leader was hindered by “a number of moles” who used to pass internal information to the Labour Party. Without directly implicating Schiavone as a mole, the criminal lawyer said the PN MP “knows what I’m talking about…and can give my regards to PL councillor Fredrick Azzopardi.”
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