MLP manifesto to stress jobs, environment

The Labour Party's manifesto for the European Parliament elections will have themes common to those of the European Socialists, Labour leader Alfred Sant said yesterday.

The main themes would be unemployment, a healthy environment and equal opportunities.

Dr Sant was speaking at a press conference held to present the party's four candidates for the elections, Glen Beddingfield, Louis Grech, John Attard Montalto and Joseph Muscat.

They were elected at Tuesday's extraordinary general conference, polling over 70 per cent of the delegates' votes.

Dr Sant praised the candidates for possessing an array of skills.

There were 11 candidates before Tuesday's conference. Party sources said Gino Cauchi was just eight odd votes away from securing the required 70 per cent of the votes. Manwel Cuschieri still needed another 20 votes or so to reach the threshold and Jimmy Magro was about 60 votes away from the threshold. Sharon Ellul Bonici polled over 120 fewer votes than what was required.

The sources also said that although counting stopped once the successful candidates garnered 70 per cent of the votes, a cursory look at the "surplus" votes indicated that Mr Muscat won the highest number of votes, followed by Mr Grech, Dr Attard Montalto and Mr Beddingfield, in that order.