Government accused of hypocrisy

Alternattiva Demokratika has expressed disapproval of the official stand taken by the Maltese government on Malta's representation in the European parliament.

AD's spokesman on European affairs, Arnold Cassola, said it clearly emerged in a document of the IGC monitoring group of the European parliament that Malta's official stand was that of requesting a minimum of five seats and not six.

"This exposes the hypocrisy of various exponents of the Maltese government who are claiming they are working for Malta to have six seats in the European parliament. If this was really the case the Maltese government would have requested a minimum of six seats for each country," Prof. Cassola said.

"We have worked hard to convince all political forces in the European Parliament to vote for six seats for Malta and indeed the European Parliament and foreign affairs committee on three different occasions had voted overwhelmingly in favour of amendments presented by the European Greens which called for the sixth seat for Malta," he added.

Prof. Cassola said it was frustrating to see all this work going up in smoke because of the official request of the Maltese government, who seemed to have given up.