Toni Abela

Toni Abela
Toni Abela
Deputy Leader of the Labour Party; Party Affairs
	In office; 13 June 2008 – 21 March 2016
Leader	Joseph Muscat
Preceded by	Michael Falzon
Succeeded by	Konrad Mizzi
Personal details
Born	1 July 1957
Political party	Labour Party; (1987-1989, 1998-present); Democratic Alternative; (1989-1998)
Spouse(s)	Marisa
Children	3

Toni Abela (born July 2, 1957) is a Maltese politician who was elected as Deputy Leader (Party Affairs) of the Malta Labour Party in June 2008.[1] A lawyer by profession, he co-drafted Malta's Whistle Blower Act, Party Financing Act and the law that removed politicians' legal protection from cases of abuse and corruption.[2] He was nominated by the Government of Malta to serve as a member of the European Court of Auditors but this nomination was rejected.

Political career

President (1988 - 1989)

In 1988, he was elected President of the Labour Party and served until 1989 when he had to resign from the party after taking a stand against corruption and criminal elements within the party.[3]

Co-founder of Malta's Green Party (1989)

That same year, he co-founded Alternattiva Demokratika, Malta's Green Party, together with the then Labour Party whip Wenzu Mintoff, espousing environmental issues, equality of gender, political transparency and a fairer electoral system with the introduction of a national quota to allow small political parties to be represented in Parliament on the line of the German model. Campaigned in favour of the introduction of the Whistle Blower Act, Freedom of Information Act, the abolishment of the institute of prescription in case of abuse of power and corruption by public officials and the need of a Party Financing Law.

Deputy Mayor of Hamrun (1993)

In 1993 he was elected as Deputy Mayor of Hamrun, a major town in Malta, and was responsible for law enforcement and management of the citizens' complaints bureau. He also introduced the first bye-laws and established the first local Court.

Labour Party Deputy Leader (Party Affairs) (2008 - 2016)

He was elected Deputy Leader for Party Affairs on 12 June 2008. Apart from his general responsibilities of running and managing the Party's internal affairs, he also monitored 65 political Labour Party outlets. He also set standards of good governance to 39 Labour Local Councils and saw that these standards are upheld. During his tenure, Labour Party went through radical changes at all levels of organisation.

Allegations of drug cover-up

During the 2013 General Election campaign[4] a recording emerged of Abela's admitting knowledge to a large quantity of cocaine being kept at a Labour Party club. The recording infers that, rather than reporting the matter to the police, Abela personally dealt with it internally. However, the Police Commissioner stated that there was no case against Toni Abela.[5]

Inspirational Quotes

On the 23rd of February 2013, Toni Abela said on the local TV programme "Dissett" the following quote, "Il-banana tieghi ikbar minn tieghek".

gollark: It would be really neat if I could get signing for that working because then (well, with more work) it would be possible to distribute potatOS update manifests (and the actual code with them) securely via *any* platform!

gollark: It says "EdDSA-like digital signatures", which implies that it may not actually be something available outside of CC.

gollark: It would be neat if they were cryptographically signed too, but it turns out I have no idea what actual algorithm the potatOS ECC library is implementing, oops.

gollark: So, progress on the potatoupdates™ system, I now have a script generating manifest files which are deterministically generated from the exact contents of a PotatOS version™.

gollark: > multiprocessing.pool objects have internal resources that need to be properly managed (like any other resource) by using the pool as a context manager or by calling close() and terminate() manually. Failure to do this can lead to the process hanging on finalization.> Note that is not correct to rely on the garbage colletor to destroy the pool as CPython does not assure that the finalizer of the pool will be called (see object.__del__() for more information).Great abstraction there, Python. Really great.

References

Ltd, Allied Newspapers. "Video: Anglu Farrugia, Toni Abela elected MLP deputy leaders". Times of Malta. Retrieved 2016-02-03.
TX Current Affairs (2011-12-13), Justice Reform - interview with Dr Toni Abela, retrieved 2016-02-03
"Toni Abela nominated to European Court of Auditors". MaltaToday.com.mt. Retrieved 2016-02-03.
"COCAINE DEALING AT A LABOUR PARTY CLUB - and Labour deputy leader Toni Abela covers it up. LISTEN TO THE VOICE RECORDING HERE. - Daphne Caruana Galizia's Notebook | Running Commentary". Daphne Caruana Galizia's Notebook | Running Commentary. Retrieved 2016-02-04.
"Police commissioner found no wrongdoing in Abela tape - Mallia". MaltaToday.com.mt. Retrieved 2016-02-04.

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[1] Ltd, Allied Newspapers. "Video: Anglu Farrugia, Toni Abela elected MLP deputy leaders". Times of Malta. Retrieved 2016-02-03.

[2] TX Current Affairs (2011-12-13), Justice Reform - interview with Dr Toni Abela, retrieved 2016-02-03

[maltatoday.com.mt-3] "Toni Abela nominated to European Court of Auditors". MaltaToday.com.mt. Retrieved 2016-02-03.

[:0-4] "COCAINE DEALING AT A LABOUR PARTY CLUB - and Labour deputy leader Toni Abela covers it up. LISTEN TO THE VOICE RECORDING HERE. - Daphne Caruana Galizia's Notebook | Running Commentary". Daphne Caruana Galizia's Notebook | Running Commentary. Retrieved 2016-02-04.

[5] "Police commissioner found no wrongdoing in Abela tape - Mallia". MaltaToday.com.mt. Retrieved 2016-02-04.