‘No one beats the PN on human rights’

Foreign Minister Tonio Borg said that when it came to legislation on human rights, no one came close to the Nationalist Party.

He highlighted increased rights given by this government to arrested persons, including the need of a warrant of arrest issued by a magistrate.

Dr Borg was referring to a point raised on Wednesday by Franco Debono on a Constitutional Court decision that mandatory arbitration breached human rights. Dr Borg noted that there were actually two court decisions, which were contradictory.

At the beginning of his speech, Dr Borg compared the no-confidence motion to a bill of indictment and said the charges had to be proven but the opposition failed to do so.

Dr Borg noted how, when introducing the motion, Opposition Leader Joseph Muscat had spoken on procedure and implied that, whatever the outcome, he would win, claiming that even if the motion was defeated, there would be instability. “This was a case of heads I win, tails you lose,” he said.

It was shameful that the opposition had not allowed its MPs to speak in the debate. The government MPs had spoken on the government’s achievements because that was what the people expected and that was their duty. They were justly proud of job creation, of the e-government achievements, of the records in tourism despite the tough times, of the fact that Malta’s shipping register was now the biggest in Europe, of the high rate of healthy life expectancy and how education had made a quantum leap.

People still remembered how the last Labour government had removed student stipends and the current would-be Labour Finance Minister had said that the stipends scheme was unsustainable and was unproductive use of scarce resources.

Turning to foreign affairs, Dr Borg said it was ironic that while the opposition wanted Parliament to declare no confidence in the government, foreign dignitaries, one after the other, were coming to Malta to thank its government for its actions during the Libyan crisis, possibly one of the most serious foreign crises that Malta faced in recent years. The government had not sat on the fence but sided with whoever was right.

The government, he concluded, would face this vote in a serene manner whatever the outcome. The people’s mandate was for a five-year term and whoever moved this motion should shoulder responsibility for letting his hunger for power take the better of him.