Gonzi launches initiative on Facebook to gauge ideas

Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi yesterday launched a new Nationalist Party initiative called myvoice.pn which involves a number of Facebook pages being spearheaded by Chris Said, who is Dialogue Minister within the government.

Dr Gonzi thanked law student Benjamin Camilleri for suggesting that the PN opens a number of Facebook groups to gauge ideas on various themes, including education, sport and the environment. He said this idea was born from the mychoice.pn initiative launched by the party in recent weeks.

The pages will be managed by Dr Said, who also attended the press conference together with PN general secretary Paul Borg Olivier. Dr Said encouraged people to “like” the Facebook pages and make use of this modern form of communication.

He, in turn, would absorb these ideas to turn even the smallest ones into “our biggest projects”. Asked if appointing the Dialogue Minister to do such a job for the PN was blurring the line between party and government affairs, Dr Gonzi said all serving politicians, including himself, had two jobs. What was important, he said, was that the politicians were able to distinguish between both roles.

During the press conference, Dr Gonzi said the PN had always been at the forefront of free expression, especially in the 1980s when the “Socialist regime” was stifling all forms of freedoms.