Labour leader Joseph Muscat said this afternoon that the instances when the government turned down options for gas-powered power stations and the alleged corruption in oil procurement led all people of good will to wonder who had an interest in ensuring that Malta continued to spend almost €1m a day on oil.
"Who has dirtied his hands with oil?" Dr Muscat asked when addressing a large crowd at Valletta Waterfront this afternoon.
He again asked the prime minister whether he had published all the reports on Enemalta. It had been revealed, he noted, that the government lost three opportunities to introduce generating systems using gas.
The first was an Italian proposal in the year 2000 to link up to the Libya-Sicily pipeline, while the second was in 2004 when an Algerian company offered a major investment to convert the power stations to gas.
Then in 2008, despite a Cabinet decision to go for gas, the government decided to build a power station using heavy fuel oil and not gas.
Such cases undermined the government's credibility, he said. The government spent almost €1m on oil every day and it was becoming increasingly clear that somebody was making money. This fuelled doubts into why the government did not convert power generation to gas.
Who had an interest for Malta to continue to depend on oil? Who had dirtied his hands in oil?
Labour wanted Malta to get rid of oil as soon as possible because that was best for the environment, health and the economy.
Dr Muscat said it was worrying that amid all these suspicions, the PN had said nothing in its programme on how it would fight corruption.
How could the PN present itself as a credible party when it had not enacted a whistleblower act despite claims even from former PN president Frank Portelli that there was corruption in Enemalta and other areas?
The prime minister had also said he agreed with removing prescription on corruption by politicians, but also did not include it in the electoral programme.
Nor did the PN programme include anything on party funding.
This was a prime minister who not only did not keep his word after the election, but even before, Dr Muscat said.
In his address, Dr Muscat said that those people who wanted to see a real change in the country had no choice but to vote Labour.
He said Labour would not get trapped in a political auction launched by others who in their panic were promising everything.
He poured scorn on the PN for having promised to publish costings of its electoral promises several days after the proposals were made.
He defended Labour's plan to give a table to Year IV pupils as a tool to fight illiteracy, including IT illiteracy. He also reiterated the PL promise to link stipends to the cost of living index, thus raising them.
Concluding Dr Muscat said the Pl was welcoming new people and assuring them that they had nothing to fear from the past. He noted what former President Eddie Fenech Adami had said about young people not interested in the past, and said the PL wanted to build a new future where all those who wanted to could participate.