Labour leader Joseph Muscat yesterday branded the Finance Minister “an amateur” and blamed him for missing the financial targets set in the Budget.
Speaking at a political activity in Mellieħa, Dr Muscat said the deficit in the first five months had shot up by €83 million, a far cry from the Budget projection of cutting the deficit by €50 million this year.
“Finance Minister Tonio Fenech is an amateur and his failure to meet targets is so pronounced that he would have been axed had he been working with a private company,” Dr Muscat charged.
He refuted the government’s explanation that the higher deficit was a result of increased spending on social services and on the Air Malta bailout.
“Even if these are taken into account they only amount to some €42 million more, which is still below the higher deficit registered so far,” Dr Muscat said.
The only way the deficit target would possibly be met was by suspending expenditure on capital projects, he added.
“Obviously, the cuts will not come from the new Parliament project,” he said, noting that expenditure on the new post-secondary college campus at Corradino and on the cancer hospital at Tal-Qroqq was not consistent.
The higher deficit meant debt had shot up by €141 million in five months and the country had paid €92 million more in interest.
At a time when the economy was in recession, he added, the Prime Minister was more concerned about the fate of Malta’s EU envoy, Richard Cachia Caruana.
Mr Cachia Caruana was ousted last week when Parliament approved an opposition motion calling for his resignation. In Parliament this week, the Prime Minister confirmed that Mr Cachia Caruana would get the same adjustment allowance that ministers received when they stopped serving.
“This goes to confirm that Richard Cachia Caruana is no simple civil servant as they tried to portray him,” Dr Muscat said.
On a different note, the PL leader welcomed the government’s cautious approach on the fiscal union proposed by the European Commission.
“We can never agree with a fiscal union if it means direct taxes are not decided by us. Taxes in Malta should be decided by the Maltese and not by somebody else.”
In reaction, the Nationalist Party said the criticism about Mr Cachia Caruana was “vindictive and personal”. It recalled the events, 30 years ago, when PN supporters had defied a government order that removed yesterday’s feast day from the list of public holidays.
People still took a day off and went to Għadira, it noted. The PN said people had suffered injustices, discrimination and job losses at the hands of the then Labour government.
“Everybody thought Muscat went to Mellieħa to apologise for the atrocities perpetrated back then but, instead, he continues to defend the extremist clique that is still around him,” the PN said.
PL’s gay pride
Labour leader Joseph Muscat has called for tolerance, respect for rights and equality in a message issued for Gay Pride Week.
In a video message titled A Fair Society - It Gets Better, Dr Muscat called on the government to really believe in and understand the love between two people, without interfering in what they did in their bedroom.
Dr Muscat said that the society which he wished to live in should not only be tolerant but also embrace, understand and grant rights to all couples and all families.