Taxpayers' funds are not there to be used to supposedly fix the Labour Party's problems, rule of law group Repubblika said on Sunday.

It was reacting to the resignation on Thursday of Labour Party CEO Randolph De Battista and his subsequent appointment as Malta's ambassador to Geneva. De Battista is known that have had differences with the party's administration.

Repubblika issued an open letter to Prime Minister Robert Abela and De Battista, saying the people were not Labour's piggybank and it was fed up with seeing them use taxpayers' money for public appointments to supposedly solve their internal problems. It was fed up seeing them feeding at the trough while preaching meritocracy and progressive politics.

"Your empty words are meaningless. It is decisions which count and you have rendered the country, its institutions and public offices as if they are your property, there to be gifted in order to avoid trouble for each other," the NGO said.  

Ambassadors, it pointed out, were appointed to represent the country, not the Labour Party. Ambassadors were not paid by the contractors who funded the Labour Party but by taxpayers.  They should be appointed if they were suitably qualified, not as a way to avoid trouble within the PL. 

As it were, the message to Malta's young people was 'do not work hard to develop your skills, what matters is to be at the heart of the clique'.