Jeffrey Pullicino takes credit for the Nationalist Party’s wafer-thin 2008 election victory in his new memoirs, recalling the Mistra scandal which took centre stage just days before the country went to the polls. 

Pullicino Orlando, then an up-and-coming PN MP with green credentials, had rented his land in Mistra for an open-air disco, sparking a political storm with polls showing the two parties running neck and neck.

In his memoirs titled "With All Due Respect" launched on Wednesday night, the former Nationalist MP writes about the day he confronted then Labour leader Alfred Sant in a bizarre press conference, where he was given a press card to represent the PN media.

“It was obvious that I had won them the elections with my performance. Lawrence Gonzi would publicly admit that he never expected to win in 2008.

Everyone around him was telling him that he was definitely going to lose. He confirmed that the tide turned in his favour in the final weeks of the campaign. The only development of note in the final weeks was Mistra.”

Walking into Valletta after the Labour Party election victory in 2013.

The PN went on to win the election by just 1,500 votes, but critics say the Mistra scandal actually cost the Nationalists votes.

Pullicino Orlando appears unrepentant about the Mistra saga and in his memoirs takes on some of his staunchest critics, extols Joseph Muscat as one of the best prime ministers in history, and blames Keith Schembri for bringing the house down.  

The controversial politician, who now heads the Malta Council for Science and Technology, says that when the Panama Papers scandal broke in 2016 he had told Muscat he had no choice but to force Schembri, his then chief of staff, and star cabinet member Konrad Mizzi to resign. He admits he had grudgingly accepted Muscat’s decision to keep them on board. 

Pullicino Orlando, who shifted his allegiance to Labour in 2013, also accuses Schembri’s “shenanigans” of giving credibility to Daphne Caruana Galizia: 
“All her writings, including the false and vindictive attacks on her adversaries, have been validated,” he writes in a chapter dedicated to Muscat.

He hits out strongly at the Nationalist Party and elements within “that had transformed it from a popular movement to an exclusive club”. Some of those elements still have their fingers in the pie, Pullicino Orlando, a dentist by profession, insists.

In the very first chapter, he claims that a lot of the political violence of the 1980s had been instigated by the Nationalist Party. When referring to the infamous Tal-Barrani incidents on November 30, 1986, considered to have been the most serious in the country’s recent political history, the former MP claims that “the Nationalist had doled out loaded revolvers on the day”.

He speaks highly of Eddie Fenech Adami, whom he describes as “a leader, a rare quality in a prime minister surprisingly”. However, he accuses him of taking part in a “cover up” following the almost fatal stabbing of Richard Cachia Caruana shortly before Christmas in 1994.

At the time, Fenech Adami was prime minister and Cachia Caruana was his personal assistant. In sharp contrast, Pullicino Orlando describes Gonzi as a person who finds it difficult to take decisions and who, in his opinion, is not a leader, even if he had backed him in the Nationalist leadership race against John Dalli. 

He says Simon Busuttil “would dance to Richard [Cachia Caruana]’s tunes”, that Adrian Delia was “hounded out” and replaced by the more “amenable” Bernard Grech.

With Marlene Farrugia at their engagement/graduation party in 1986.

It is evident there was no love lost between Pullicino Orlando and Cachia Caruana who, the former MP says, has a “streak of megalomania which was the driving force behind many of [his] actions. That same character trait that led him to believe he had the right to destroy my reputation, in his efforts to hound me out of parliament.”

Pullicino Orlando admits he had a very good relationship with Caruana Galizia until, one day, he spoke openly about his utter disdain to Gonzi’s leadership and, then, the respect turned to “mutual dislike, or worse”. Still, he admits he was “bewildered” when he learnt about her death.

He concludes the chapter dedicated to her by saying: “I was angry. I sincerely hope that the bastards who blew her up to shut her up, sullying our nation’s reputation in the process, get their comeuppance.”

Shifting from light-hearted prose to strong words, Pullicino Orlando speaks openly about his personal life, his ex-two wives, his partner, his children, his parents, among others. 

He goes into some detail about his decision as a Nationalist MP to move a private member’s bill on divorce without first consulting the party.

His intention, he declares in dedicating the book to his granddaughter, was to give his side of his story.