In his reaction to the Budget tomorrow, Opposition leader Simon Busuttil would be stating what the Government did not say and what the Nationalist Party’s alternative was, he said this morning.

Speaking during an interview on Radio 101, Dr Busuttil said he would be comparing the Government’s proposals to his party’s vision and show that the Government’s standards were not acceptable in a European country.

He acknowledged that the Budget was full of measures “most of which are good” and which had been initiated by the Nationalist Government.

The problem with the Budget was that it lacked honesty.

“It shows the positive but not the negative… It is like an election budget and an EP election is on our doorstep… It looks like it more important for the Government to win that election than to present an honest budget,” he said.

He noted that the Government could present such a Budget because the previous Government had left a country that was strong.

He said that his first reaction to it was that the devil must be in the detail because it looked too good.

And after going into the detail he could clearly see that job creation ideas were lacking and the Budget failed to go into the cost of the measures being proposed and how they were to be financed.

The Budget also failed to identify new sectors where jobs could be created.

“The only new sector the Government came up with in this Budget is the sale of our citizenship, something we strongly object to on a point of principle. Our citizenship is not for sale,” Dr Busuttil said.

“The Maltese do not agree with this act. It is an immoral law which lacks principle.”

He noted that for the scheme to become law, only the vote on the third reading remained. This was to be taken on Tuesday.

The Opposition, he said, had appealed for consensus at all stages and presented a number of amendments to transform an act that stank into a good one.

“But the Government did not even accept one of them. We will keep appealing for consensus until Tuesday.

“However, if this is not reached the Opposition does not exclude anything,” Dr Busuttil said.

It did not exclude halting the scheme, changing it and also withdrawing citizenships that would have been given.

He said that the fact that the scheme was not in Labour’s electoral programme raised a number of questions, such as why and whether Labour already knew who were the people to be granted citizenship.

“If this is the case, what is the party’s interest in handing out citizenships in such an underhand manner. The scheme raises a lot of suspicions,” Dr Busuttil said.