The Office of the Prime Minister has turned down a request to publish the contract given to Josef Caruana – a former editor of the GWU’s daily l-Orizzont who is now an aide to Prime Minister Joseph Muscat at Castille.

According to the OPM, a request under the Freedom of Information Act submitted by The Sunday Times of Malta to obtain Mr Caruana’s contract cannot be met due to data protection considerations.

“Kindly note that, as guided by the Data Protection Unit, the contract is not being disclosed as the position is not regarded as top management, and public interest does not outweigh data protection considerations,” the OPM said.

This newspaper has now filed an appeal as it maintains that since Mr Caruana was employed directly by the OPM as a person of trust of Dr Muscat and is paid out of public funds, then his contract is in the public interest.

It is not yet known what is the actual position of Mr Caruana at the OPM.

Although officially the OPM is saying that Mr Caruana’s occupation is related to the compilation of replies to parliamentary questions, he has been frequently seen involved in the coordination of stage-managed events organised for the Prime Minister.

The OPM said that Mr Caruana is receiving a salary of more than €33,000 which includes compensation for overtime.

Until the last general election, Mr Caruana was the editor of l-Orizzont and was known for his hard hitting editorials against the PN, the Church and independent media journalists.

After’s Labour’s win last June, his editorials called for the “disappearance” of independent journalists who were “stifling progress”, calling them “deviants and traitors".

In an unprecedented move, the owners of l-Orizzont, the GWU disassociated itself from Mr Caruana’s editorials – hours after the Prime Minster said that he did not agree with the language used by Mr Caruana.

A few days later, the former editor resigned to join the OPM as one of Dr Muscat’s officials.