Joseph Muscat is the worst thing to happen to Malta since the plague - Salvu Mallia
Prime Minister Joseph Muscat is a “parasite” who only wants to “please Labour Party members and its inner circles” according the newly announced PN Candidate Salvu Mallia.
Speaking in Victoria, Gozo the PN candidate for second and twelfth districts said that Dr Muscat was “the worst thing to happen to Malta since the 1813 plague” who has damaged Malta “morally, ethically and economically”.
Mallia then said that Leader of the Opposition Simon Busuttil would be the best choice for a country looking for “conscious leadership which looks after the wellbeing of society”.
Dr Busuttil, who also spoke at the event, said that Mallia represented two parts of the Maltese population. The first being those who believed in Joseph Muscat’s pre-electoral message and the need for change in Maltese politics but had now begun to realise that the change was a negative one and that everything the Prime Minister had promised would never become a reality.
The second, were those who desperately wanted a government which champions “cleaner politics, a cleaner environment, and a better quality of life.”
At the meeting, Dr Busuttil highlighted the four pillars of the Nationalist Party’s vision which are an economy for the people, clean and honest politics, social justice and an improved quality of life.
Dr Busuttil also addressed questions from this year’s budget. He said that this was not actually a ‘social’ budget despite the current administration’s message. He pointed to the current minimum wage, whilst he welcomed the Prime Minister’s announcement that the government will begin to tackle the issue, he questioned why this had not been included in the budget this year, and instead announced a week later.
He pointed to the disparity between Malta’s minimum wage and other EU member states.
Using Germany as an example, he claimed that the minimum wage is almost double what it is here in Malta, and whilst he does not expect for the current minimum wage to be equal to that, he could not understand why there has not been a steady increase per year despite the constant claims of economic prosperity from the current government.
He again criticized the introduction of an excise duty on toiletries and detergents, saying that this proved the budget was not a social one since it was putting up the expenses on daily essential products for every citizen on the island. The government had introduced “a tax on every time a person washes something”.
He then called for the introduction of a free medication for pensioners, saying that whilst the government did introduce favourable terms to this demographic they were still paying a vast majority of their monthly salary on various medications.
Speaking on the Gozo hospital, he stressed that the Nationalist Party was not against the privatization of such entities, but against the privatization of the only public hospital on the island.
He also questioned the lack of transparency surrounding the project whose owners, he claimed, were impossible to locate and every company is owned by another subsidiary company creating a chain which will most likely lead to the British Virgin Islands.
On the traffic situation he said was an issue that effected Gozitans and Maltese alike, and much like everything else the government was four years behind. He pointed to the current administration’s recent proposals for a tunnel connecting the two islands saying that the government had originally abandoned the previous administration’s plans for such a project in favour of a bridge which no one approved of. On the question of accessibility between the islands, he called for the introduction of a fast ferry service.
Addressing the Panama Papers scandal, Dr Busuttil said that the Nationalist Party would never forget or forgive the indiscretions which surfaced during the Panama Papers leak. Whilst the government used propaganda to make the population forget about the issue, the international community had not and it has left a stain on Maltese politics, Dr Busuttil claimed.