Former Labour Radio host claims businesses trying to stop Muscat from contesting EP election

Former Labour Party president and radio host, Emmanuel Cuschieri, has said that he will resort to naming businesses who are allegedly trying to stop former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat from running in the upcoming MEP elections.

“A number of businessmen whose names I know are trying to interfere in Labour’s internal affairs and convince someone to take a step back and not run in June’s EP elections”, he said without mentioning Muscat’s name in a 20minute-long video he posted on his Facebook page.

Earlier this month, Muscat said that he was considering a return to politics and the possibility of running for the MEP elections, however, he never gave a definitive answer.

In the same video Cuschieri also alleged that the party was stalling on the application for former PL MP Rosianne Cutajar to return to the party’s Parliamentary Group.

“Cutajar has been promised a return and told it’s just a matter of procedure. But since then, absolutely nothing has happened. What’s stopping it from happening”, he asked.

Cutajar, who is currently serving as an independent MP, was forced out of the party following leaked chats published on author Mark Camilleri’s blog that show how the MP had a close relationship with the alleged mastermind behind the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, Yorgen Fenech.

In comments to the media, Prime Minister, Robert Abela, said that he believes that Cutajar had been punished enough, and that he would not stop her from coming back to the Party.

The Prime Minister said that Cutajar had requested to rejoin the party’s Parliamentary Group at the end of January, but nothing has been heard on this front since.

Cuschieri alleged that a Parliamentary Group meeting to discuss Cutajar’s return to the party was cancelled on Monday, but party sources told media houses that this was not true, and that a long-scheduled party executive meeting took place and that Cutajar was not on the agenda.