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Opposition Leader Simon Busuttil yesterday appealed to the Prime Minister to show more seriousness in government leadership.
The Opposition, he said, was not seeing any new style of government but, rather, a return to bygone practices.
Speaking during the debate on the address in reply to the President’s Speech, Dr Busuttil said that, for the first time in years, the country was again speaking of “vindictive political transfers”.
The Government did not keep its promises and the Malta Tagħna Lkoll (Malta For All) slogan had become “ridiculous”.
Listing a number of examples to prove his point, Dr Busuttil said people who featured on Labour billboards were appointed to government boards and entities.
The Malta Communications Authority’s board was forcefully replaced in breach of European law.
There was chaos at St Vincent de Paul Residence where more than 90 transfers were made. Dr Busuttil said the Government would present legislation that would allow MPs to occupy offices in government boards and authorities. It also appeared that the Leader of the House would no longer have to be a minister.
Such measures did not inspire confidence in the Government and its promises of meritocracy, he said.
Dr Busuttil said that it would be a mistake for the ministerial code of ethics to be changed in a way to allow private practice, irrespective of whether work was paid for or not. Until the code was amended, it had to be respected and no Prime Minister had the authority to grant waivers.
Earlier in his address, Dr Busuttil said that the way the Government used the President’s Speech undermined the authority and respect enjoyed by the Presidency, which should be strengthened not weakened.
The speech lacked the sense of unity and seriousness. It was partisan and intended to humiliate the Opposition, which had already made it clear that it would be serious, strong and constructive. It had voted in favour, or declared that it would vote in favour, of the seven Bills that were already presented.
However, the Government used every occasion to attack the Opposition whenever it did its duty to monitor the Administration.
Notwithstanding the Opposition’s warnings, the first economic result of the Labour Government was that of Malta becoming subject to the EU’s excessive deficit procedure.
Such a situation could have been avoided but the Government failed to convince the European Commission that it had a plan to keep control of public finances, having inherited a strong and stable economy.
The last information the Nationalist government had was that the deficit for last year should have been under three per cent.
However, the deficit rose to 3.3 per cent under the Labour government. A Nationalist government would have presented a concrete plan to curb it.
It would not have appointed 23 ministers, employed several people from outside the civil service or stopped the school-building programme.
A Nationalist government would not have restricted the time the eternal flame for the war dead was lit, which was a shameful way of trying to cut costs.
The Opposition moved an amendment to the motion seeking to pin down the Government to commit itself to create 25,000 new jobs over the next five years. It also urged the Government to clarify its position on all the sectors that were not mentioned in the speech.
The amendment was defeated by 29 to 39 votes after a division.