The Nationalist Party’s campaign for the MEP elections will be a positive one based on the message that Malta can become a better country - “Malta Ahjar”.
Addressing a press conference shortly after launching the campaign on Twitter this morning, Opposition leader Simon Busuttil and general secretary Chris Said called on people who are disappointed with the way Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has led the country so far to express themselves using their vote.
Dr Busuttil said that the pre-electoral promises of meritocracy, transparency in decisions and a government that listens had been thrown out of the window in the government’s first year, especially through decisions on which the government had no mandate, such as the LNG tanker in Marsaxlokk Bay, the citizenship scheme and the introduction of adoptions by gay couples. Malta had also been ridiculed around the world, he said.
The party, he said, was calling for a better Malta after one year of a Labour government because it did not feel like a better country, except for people who appeared on billboards before the election, relatives and Labour MPs who were better off through decisions taken by the government.
He said that the PN would be targeting a third seat but it was mindful that it was starting from a very disadvantaged position at a deficit of 36,000 votes.
“We want people to judge and so far Joseph Muscat has been disappointing,” Dr Busuttil said.
He noted that for the past year, the Opposition had always sought consensus but the government repeatedly shut the door in its face.
It had voted in favour of 80 per cent of laws passed and of a President who came from the opposite political camp.
The track record of the two Nationalist MEPs spoke for itself with the result that their achievement surpassed that by four PL MEPs.
A year on, the government still had no plans for job creation and was hiding the fact that unemployment was on the increase.
The youth unemployment scheme promised prior to the election was only open to 350 from the 5,800 young people on the unemployment register, he said, adding that unemployment had increased by 540 in one year.
Dr Said said that the campaign would be a modest one in terms of spending and the PN would not spend money it did not have.
He said that since September, the party’s media has been sustainable and no longer a loss-maker. The PN was also planning a fund-raising activity for May 1 in aid of the campaign.
Dr Said said that it would not be a billboard campaign, contrary to the PL that was already using billboards, paid from public funds.