Labour leader Joseph Muscat yesterday accused Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi of being “in denial” when he continues to insist the government would keep doing things the way it is.
“The first step, in psychology and in economics, is to admit you have a problem if you want to move on,” Dr Muscat said during a phone-in on One Radio, the party’s station.
On Tuesday, credit rating agency Moody’s downgraded government bond ratings from A1 to A2 and changed the outlook to negative for the country.
Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi last week reacted to the report saying the government would keep doing things as it had been doing when asked whether it would change the way it was operating.
Dr Muscat accused the Prime Minister of being in denial, saying Dr Gonzi was insisting on “doing the same things that got us here, which have led to the negative outlook”.
He insisted that what worried him most was not the downgrading but the negative outlook, which would lead to higher premiums.
“The people have long downgraded Dr Gonzi’s government,” Dr Muscat said, adding that people were struggling to make ends meet.
He accused the government of not getting its priorities right, such as spending €100 million on a new Parliament building and on buying a power station extension that ran on heavy fuel oil while knowing that it would be converted to gas soon.
In a reaction, the Nationalist Party said “bickering over the Moody’s report is puerile and will get us nowhere”. It said the country had to brush aside “petty partisan politics and get our act together” to ensure future success for Malta.
The PN said Moody’s report gave a very sober picture of the international economic situation and how external factors had a direct impact on Malta’s open economy.
“It is rich that Labour leader Joseph Muscat, out of all people, accuses the government of ignoring economic realities. If there is someone who, time and again, has proved to be living in a world of make-believe, shockingly oblivious to what is happening around us, it is precisely Joseph Muscat with his ostrich-like way of doing politics,” the party said.