UPDATED AND CORRECTED/Labour Party names Deborah Schembri its representative on Xarabank tonight when Marlene Farrugia had already accepted invitation

Marlene Farrugia

Deborah Schembri with Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando

The Labour Party is sending backbench MP Deborah Schembri to represent it on Xarabank tonight when her fellow backbencher Marlene Farrugia had already accepted an invitation to be a guest on the show.

They will be speaking about the government’s plans to turn over a huge tract of agricultural land at Zonqor Point to a man from Jordan.

And I cannot emphasise the point enough: it’s a man from Jordan, and not a Jordanian company.

The government signed its ‘heads of agreement’ with the Malta-incorporated company Sadeen Education Investment Ltd, which has just one shareholder: Hani Hasan Naji Al Salah in his personal name and not even a holding company.

Under the twisted rules which govern Public Broadcasting Services, and which have perverted the idea of ‘political balance’, the political parties must have a representative on every show where The Other Political Party is present.

Technically, Marlene Farrugia is therefore the Labour Party’s representative and the Labour Party can’t send another representative to the show when she is there already, nor can the producers accept that other representative, without breaking broadcasting regulations. This means that the Labour Party has declared Marlene Farrugia – who was elected to parliament on the Labour ticket and sits there under the Labour whip – not to be its representative.

I am quite sure that the Labour Party’s first choice of representative to sit alongside Marlene Farrugia and spar with her on the matter of Zonqor Point would have been disgraced former ‘Green MP of the Year’ Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, her ex husband, who hates her with a passion that is disturbing given the number of years that have gone by and the fact that he was married to somebody else in between.

The Labour Party, last winter, sent Pullicino Orlando to represent it on Xarabank, a stunt which backfired not only because he is not a politician but chairman of a state council, but also because he can’t control himself. But sending him to fight with his ex wife on Xarabank would have been too cheap and tacky even by Labour standards – not that they would have bothered, but the public wouldn’t like it.

So instead they are going to send the next best thing: Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s divorce lawyer when he and Marlene Farrugia divorced three and a half years ago: Deborah Schembri.

Yes, the tacky Labour Party is trying to upset and undermine Farrugia on television tonight by forcing her to debate the issue with the lawyer for the other party in her divorce from Pullicino Orlando.

This is part of a pattern. When Marlene Farrugia used to shadow utilities and utilities billing, the government appointed Carmen Ciantar, Pullicino Orlando’s newly estranged second wife, who also hates her predecessor and doesn’t communicate with her at all, CEO of the state utilities billing agency, ARMS.

The only reason they don’t do something similar with Lara Boffa is that, unlike Carmen Ciantar, she has a low IQ. But it hadn’t stopped them trying: they originally appointed Boffa to the board of Enemalta (of all things, given what was happening), but she only lasted a few months before her brainlessness proved too much even for them.