The Labour Party dismissed the questionable actions of its Mosta mayor as a “trivial matter” in its first reaction to the censorship exercise involving the council magazine.

“The Labour Party is focused on issues of national importance such as the increase in the cost of living and fuel prices and has no time for trivial matters,” a spokesman said when asked whether Mosta mayor Paul Chetcuti Caruana’s behaviour was acceptable and whether the party would be taking any action.

In a terse two-sentence reply, the spokesman insisted the issue was “between the mayor, as chairman of the editorial board, and the editor of the magazine”.

At least six council employees on Tuesday were busy tearing up a page from the magazine featuring an article by the deputy mayor and blackening out a paragraph on another page. The torn pages were subsequently burnt in a metal bin.

Dr Chetcuti Caruana objected to the article penned by fellow Labour councillor Josette Agius Decelis, which referred to a series of parliamentary questions on Mosta roads tabled by her husband, Labour MP Anthony Agius Decelis.

The mayor said yesterday he would be taking legal action against the magazine’s editor Ivan Bartolo for interviews he gave Net TV and Favourite Channel in which he condemned the act as censorship.

Dr Chetcuti Caruana said he had ordered the Christmas edition of the magazine to be withheld because the article written by Mrs Agius Decelis constituted an unfair advantage to an MP on the Mosta district.

He also claimed that, as chairman of the editorial board, he was not shown a draft copy of the magazine.

However, according to Mr Bartolo, there was no standard policy dictating he had to show a draft of the magazine to the mayor before it went to print.

The article was a continuation of a report on the state of Mosta’s roads published by the council earlier this year.