Nickie Vella De Fremeaux Laments Political Hatred As Times Of Malta Accuses Her Of Looking Up To Michelle Muscat
Nickie Vella de Fremaux has dismissed claims by The Times of Malta that she looks up to Michelle Muscat, describing the controversial editorial as “a pathetic attempt to sow political hatred”.
“I’ve only met Michelle Muscat twice in my life,” the Opposition leader’s wife told Lovin Malta. “I don’t look up or down on anyone, I don’t try and imitate anyone and I don’t discriminate between people because of the political party they support. I don’t even care about what anyone else does and only care about who I am. What you see is what you get.”
In today’s editorial, The Times of Malta took Vella de Fremeaux to task over a Facebook post which claimed that her son was excluded from a schoolfriend’s party because of the friend’s mother’s political dislike for Adrian Delia. She pointed out that the mother “lights candles and puts flowers in Valletta”, a reference to the monthly vigils in honour of assassinated journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
“The real tragedy to all this is that the Opposition leader’s wife sounds very much like Mrs Muscat,” The Times of Malta wrote. “It seems like she took the cue from her, like she looked up to her and considers Ms Muscat as some trendsetter. She is surprised that parents who ‘light candles and place flowers in Valletta’, referring to the Daphne Caruana Galizia makeshift monument, do not invite her son to parties.”
“Those same people she is disappointed in are very probably equally dissatisfied by her husband’s performance and his failure to reignite and unite the party. This is the harsh reality of politics. That is not bullying. Many Nationalist supporters evidently do not think like Dr Vella de Fremeaux. They do not like these antics and certainly do not look forward to a Nationalist Party moulded out of Labour, as it is tragically looking.”
The PN’s media chief Pierre Portelli criticised the editorial as “pathetic”, prompting Opposition MP Jason Azzopardi – a vocal critic of Delia – to accuse Portelli of “sheer madness”.
“Sheer madness calling ‘pathetic’ a newspaper which any respectable Party needs as a faithful & powerful medium for transmitting its political message,” Azzopardi tweeted. “I’m proud not to be Michelle Muscat’s defence counsel.”
The government’s head of communications Kurt Farrugia also weighed in, arguing that Azzopardi’s tweet betrays his view of The Times as a faithful medium to transmit the PN’s message and urging the Times to disassociate itself from the statement.
Caught up in the middle of the PN’s latest public internal battle, Vella de Fremeaux argued that some people cannot fathom how she isn’t a “prosthesis” of her husband or how she doesn’t look at political colours or social class status when dealing with people.
“I’ve been raised to treat the street sweeper and the President with equal respect and I’m instilling the same values in my children,” she said. “Neither do I treat people differently because of which political party they support, people’s political affiliations are completely irrelevant to me.”
“There wasn’t all this political hatred back when I was at University, but it’s here now and we need to stop it.”
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