The Labour Party had defended the appointment of a 19-year-old to the board of governors of Finance Malta and attacked Nationalist MP David Thake for being critical of it.

Carlos Zarb, a Labour Party councillor from St Paul's Bay, was appointed to the board last year. Finance Malta is formed jointly by the government and the financial services sector and tasked with promoting Maltese financial services. Half of the members of the board are appointed by the government and the remainder by the private sector. 

Zarb is a member of the Labour Party youth wing and is planning to study law.

"He is 19 years old. A member of FZL and has  A-Levels. They made him a director on the board of Finance Malta. And all of Malta is worried about Moneyval,” the Nationalist MP said in a Facebook post on Thursday.

In a retort, the Labour Party said this was evidence that the Nationalist opposition did not 'believe' in youths, viewing them as an accessory for the stage or billboards.

It said Thake's post revealed what Bernard Grech's PN really believed. For them, a person could not serve in a public institution because he was just 19, it said. It also recalled that it was the Labour government which had lowered the voting age to 16. 

Tourism and Consumer Protection Minister Clayton Bartolo in another Facebook post said the Nationalist MP was tarnishing a person simply because he was a Labourite.

He said that legislation which covered Finance Malta laid down that the board should include a youth.

Thake replied that the Labour Party was showing that as far as it was concerned, the only suitable Maltese were those who waved the Labour Party flag.

"Of so many competent youths, the government could only find someone who was in the FZL (the Labour youth wing). If the facts tarnished somebody's reputation, it was not his fault," he told the minister.