PN leader Bernard Grech has denied claims by his former deputy that he lied over a report into Naxxar mayor Anne Marie Muscat Fenech Adami’s conduct.
Robert Arrigo on Wednesday went public with accusations that Grech had lied when he said, on national television, that the report had not yet been concluded.
Arrigo said Grech should do the honourable thing and resign.
“He said the report was not done, when actually it was,” Arrigo, whose term as deputy PN leader ended last week, wrote in a public Facebook post.
Replying to questions, Grech said this was not the case.
“The assertion made by Robert Arrigo on social media this morning is not true,” a spokesperson for Grech said.
The spokesperson said that, on the Muscat Fenech Adami case, the PN’s administrative council had decided to hold off considering the matter until after the March general election.
This, the spokesperson added, had actually been suggested by Arrigo himself.
“The facts show that at no time did I stop the report from being published by the ethics and disciplinary board and the case of the Naxxar mayor is on the agenda for discussion at the administrative council,” Grech was quoted as saying by the spokesperson.
Arrigo did not claim that Grech had sought to block the report's publication.
Grech had tried to force Muscat Fenech Adami out of the party last December, after she voted in favour of a controversial large-scale apartment project in Naxxar. But the mayor had defied the PN leader, prompting him to request an ethics probe into her conduct.
The PN has remained tight-lipped about that probe. Muscat Fenech Adami has remained in her post as a PN Naxxar mayor.
In an appearance on TVM show Xtra early in June, Grech was evasive when asked about the report and implied that it had not yet been concluded.
Arrigo had been elected to the post of deputy leader during the tenure of Adrian Delia and remained in that post after Grech succeeded Delia as party leader, despite having initially said he intended to resign.
The Sliema businessman has been elected in two districts for four consecutive elections and is the shadow minister for tourism.
His departure from the PN leadership was not a celebratory one. In his outgoing speech as PN deputy leader, he said that he was sidelined by the party without explanation and barred from attending party events.
On Monday evening, he published a photo of a letter from the Commissioner for Inland Revenue, showing that the PN owes more than €200,000 in unpaid VAT.
The letter was addressed to him personally, on behalf of PN media arm Media.Link Communications.