The Nationalist Party has come out defending one of its journalists who was on Monday told by Transport Minister Ian Borg that she should be sacked for doing her job.
The statement came after a terse question and answer session on camera following a press conference when the journalist, Christine Amaira, was pressing Borg on whether he agreed with his previous party leader, Joseph Muscat, that Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed when she became irrelevant.
The statement was made by Muscat during his testimony before the inquiry board into whether the State could have prevented the journalist’s murder.
The exchange continued until the minister chastised the journalist for asking questions without allowing people to reply.
“Had I been your head of news, I would have sacked you already,” he told Amaira as she pressed him for a reply. “You ask the question and then wait for the reply. You ask your question but then I choose my replies,” he told the journalist, who explained that he was not answering her question.
Before walking off, Borg quoted Sunday’s Malta Today survey which showed that the Labour Party had a very comfortable advantage over the Nationalist Party. “Continue acting this way and you will continue faring badly in the surveys,” he told the journalist.
The PN in a statement slammed the minister’s behaviour.
“The behaviour of Minister Borg clearly shows that for this government everything goes and he does not even bother to attack a member of the press in the most open way while trying to humiliate her by telling her that she should be fired from her job.
“Ian Borg has not yet understood that journalists are a pillar of democracy and because they have the right to do their job he must defend them, not attack them. This is all the more serious in light of the fact that a journalist was killed because she was doing her job,” the PN said.
The party said it would have been better if the minister resigned after the court found that he was not credible in his testimony and that he had taken advantage of a vulnerable person.