The Labour Party has used the services of a former top Nationalist media official in its final electoral push for Saturday’s elections.
In a slick video, identical to a recent Danish television advert which went viral, the former PN media chief commercial officer, Marouska Pisani Bugeja, is seen conducting a social TV experiment identifying what is common among people from different walks of life and culminating in the ‘triumphal’ entrance on set by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat while conveying Labour’s ‘unifying’ message.
Commenting on the advert and her experience, Ms Pisani Bugeja, who after the 2017 election was put on the government’s payroll as an adviser apart from other roles, wrote that this was “one of the best experiences of her life”.
Political media commentators described the use of Ms Pisani Bugeja as ‘Labour’s face’ in its final appeal to the electorate as “smart” because it projected the party’s message by someone still associated with the PN.
“Obviously, few people know that the former PN media official has switched political allegiance. At the end, it’s all about perception,” one commentator noted.
Such moves are no novelty, with commentators recalling that the PN used to do the same, using former Labourites to take part in their activities or appear in party adverts.
All you need is find the right people accepting to do this and nowadays that’s quite easy
“All you need is find the right people accepting to do this and nowadays that’s quite easy,” they said, mentioning TV presenter Pablo Micallef and former One TV head of news Manuel Micallef among those who used to make regular appearances in PN mass activities or on NET TV.
A former secretary at the PN headquarters, Ms Pisani Bugeja was appointed CCO at Media.Link Communications in 2014.
However, she left abruptly in 2016 to join Where’s Everybody, the company behind Xarabank, among other TV programmes, partially financed by state funds.
The 36-year old was appointed part-time media adviser by the Parliamentary Secretary for European Affairs, Aaron Farrugia, last January, earning €34,000 a year for 30 hours a week while keeping her full-time job at Where’s Everybody.
Soon after, Silvio Schembri, the Financial Services Parliamentary Secretary, appointed her a director representing government on Tech.mt, a new state- funded agency co-founded with the Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry.