No election campaign yet – Gonzi

Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi is insisting that a string of recently-announced government projects and initiatives has nothing to do with an election that may be round the corner.

With his government’s lifespan potentially on short lease, Dr Gonzi adopted a business as usual attitude during a visit to a tourist services company in Qormi yesterday.

A vote of no confidence is expected on Thursday and if the government loses it the country will head to the polls.

This week, the government announced a radical revamp of censorship laws for theatre productions – they will be replaced with a classification system, the introduction of a sex offenders register, the eventual opening of a distinct drug court and a multi-million euro storm water tunnel project that will start very soon.

Unfazed with the argument that the government was rushing a number of initiatives because of an election, Dr Gonzi said it was “logical” for an Administration entering its fifth year of office to have a number of projects that were coming to fruition.

Referring to the overhaul of censorship laws, Dr Gonzi said the government had been working on it for at least two years.

The changes to the law were announced two weeks after Culture Minister Mario de Marco took his oath of office and after a string of embarrassing decisions over the past three years that saw the internationally-acclaimed play Stitching being banned.

Dr Gonzi said there was no election campaign going on yet and everything depended on next week’s debate and vote in Parliament.

“This is not a crisis that my government or I created and we have to resolve it like we did with other things,” Dr Gonzi said.

When addressing the employees and management of FTIAS, a subsidiary of the FTI Group, Dr Gonzi went over the economy’s achievements last year, which, he said, were not a “coincidence”.

He said the government’s strategy of diversifying the economy and investing in human resources had ensured the country kept its head above water.

Drawing parallels between the economy’s performance and the company he was visiting – it has 130 employees and is expected to add another 25 by March while providing a host of back office services to the mother company – Dr Gonzi said the country’s success depended on the investment by companies that trusted the government’s strategic direction.

Speaking later at a reception for journalists and the diplomatic corps at party headquarters, he referred to the political crisis being faced by his government. He expressed the hope that in next week’s no-confidence vote the government would be judged on the results it has achieved over the past economically-challenging years.

He hoped the confidence vote would be based on these realities “but not on other issues that are irrelevant to the running of the country”.

ksansone@timesofmalta.com