Updated - Adds new Evarist Bartolo comment on Facebook below
"If he had given me that piece of advice, I would have resigned," Education Minister Evarist Bartolo said this morning when asked about MEP and former PL leader's Alfred Sant's calls for Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi to step aside.
Dr Sant yesterday used a Facebook post to urge Dr Mizzi to step down in the wake of the Panama Papers scandal.
He insists he is innocent and has submitted himself to an audit.
"The honourable thing to be done as soon as possible would be for Minister Konrad Mizzi to resign," Dr Sant wrote.
Asked for his reaction today, Mr Bartolo was unequivocal and told the Times of Malta that he would have followed Dr Sant’s advice.
“What I certainly would not have done is touched a country like Panama,” he said.
Mr Bartolo said this did not seem to be an issue of illegality. But ordinary people paid taxes and were right to question why some were seeking to do otherwise.
“The small person who works, and even those with more wealth, we expect them to pay taxes, and they rightly turn to us and say: ‘excuse me, but the Romans had a proverb, there are laws for gods and laws for animals, are we animals?’,” he said.
Prime Minister Joseph Muscat told the party's general meeting on Sunday that action would be taken but only after the audit was concluded.
In his maiden speech as party deputy leader last Thursday, Dr Mizzi had passed the buck about his future to the Prime Minister saying he would accept any decision in his regard.
Asked for his reaction to that call, Mr Bartolo said if it were him he would not ask someone else to judge him but would take responsibility for his own actions.
He said the Labour Party had been built by people of strong principles who had sacrificed a lot and believed in morality, including “fiscal morality”.
The senior Cabinet minister also said that he would be pushing for legal changes to stop citizens from having offshore holdings with countries which did not share information with Malta.
He also believed Malta should have a public registry of people with offshore and onshore holdings.