Abuse of power: Luciano and Dorothy Busuttil both use disabled badges on their cars

UPDATE: I have since obtained Luciano Busuttil’s number and have been trying to ring him. The first few times, he hit the reject button. Now the calls go straight through to voicemail.

————-

On 30 December, I received the photograph below from a friend who was in Victoria, Gozo, at around midday (a very reliable friend – he is a senior school official). The car in the photograph is the state-funded vehicle used by Luciano Busuttil, the Labour MP who chairs the Malta Sports Council. It is parked in a slot reserved for the disabled.

Busuttil will now write to the Data Protection Commissioner, as he has done once already, to complain that I revealed his number-plate publicly, and that I should be ordered to remove it. However, showing his number-plate is essential, as otherwise that could be any old car and you would have to take it on trust that it is his, which is just not on.

My friend wrote: “Luciano Busuttil has parked in a disabled parking spot in full view of everyone outside Arkadia, with complete indifference. I have confirmed that he doesn’t have a disabled parking badge on his car.”

I replied: “He’s not even remotely disabled except for flat feet.”

My friend wrote back, having checked the car windscreen a little while later: “He now appears to have a disabled parking badge. Amazing. And absolutely no one in his entourage was even remotely disabled.  Clearly, the man must have a disability badge as a way of always finding available parking. What utter scum. I’m just waiting for him to pontificate about how they care about the elderly and disabled! They have no shame.”

Because the photo and story arrived in the festive rush, I failed to upload it immediately and then it got buried in a stack of other things. But this afternoon I received an email from another person, who I do not know, and so I remembered about it.

“Do you know that Luciano Busuttil’s wife, Dorothy, has a handicapped permit? Her husband’s state-paid driver takes their children to school so that she can be at the office – a Taghna Lkoll job at the Malta Gaming Authority – on time.

“She doesn’t need to hassle for parking when she gets to Smart City, where she works, because she has a disabled badge. But she doesn’t look disabled at all, not with those high heels. She arrives between 7.30am and 7.45am in a white Alfa Romeo Giulietta and slips straight into a parking bay reserved for the handicapped.”

Since I rang Luciano Busuttil about the fake Mark Abela Facebook profile which he used to try to pick up women, I have changed my phone and lost his number. So I am waiting for a colleague to send it to me. However, should the Labour MP and Malta Sports Council chairman wish to ring me, meanwhile, to explain why both he and his wife have been issued with disabled parking badges, he may do so at any time.