Home Affairs Minister Manuel Mallia this evening said he was at "Tal-Barrani" with the Nationalist Party when the PN was not allowed to hold a mass meeting by the then Labour government in November 1986.
Speaking over shouting from the Opposition benches as Nationalist MPs objected to Dr Mallia's use of question time to speak about matters not related to the question in hand, Dr Mallia said that when the PN says that "we are going back to the 80s" it forgets that "I was with you at the time".
Dr Mallia said that Wednesday's incident in which his driver shot at a car in Gzira was "unfortunate" but if he came to know that a person who works for his ministry tried to conceal what happened, he would make the person in question resign.
Dr Mallia told parliament that he is very displeased with what happened on Wednesday night.
"I had no indication that one of two policemen assigned to me as my drivers would have ended up doing what he did," he said.
PN deputy leader Mario de Marco interjected saying that the minister was trying to take up parliamentary question time to make a ministerial statement, which is simply not done, and he was doing so to avoid shouldering responsibility. He said that this particular time should not be used by ministers to make statements.
Dr Mallia said that he never ran away from shouldering political responsibility.
He said that the late Guido de Marco had security guards who were armed with a weapon, while President Emeritus Eddie Fenech Adami and Richard Cachia Caruana, Malta's former Ambassador to the EU, to this day have an armed security guard. Opposition members intervened and accused Dr Mallia of lying.
Dr de Marco said it is unacceptable for Dr Mallia to mention a person who is not with us any longer, referring to his father, Guido de Marco.
Dr Mallia later referred to columnist and blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia as having had armed officers with her for a time.
Dr Mallia said that he has no intention to engage in a cover-up and to place the movement he represents in a bad light.