The government is committing “incest” by blurring the lines between it and the Labour Party, Opposition leader Simon Busuttil said yesterday as he described the state of affairs as “scandalous”.

It was also taking the law into its own hands by using billboards that were illegal as they were only meant to be used during last year’s electoral campaign.

As he addressed the Nationalist Party extraordinary general council which approved the party’s manifesto for the May 24 European Parliament elections, Dr Busuttil said Labour’s first year in office had been characterised by favouritism to benefit those in the inner circles or those who had helped Labour win the last general election.

No one should be above the law, neither the government, the Labour Party or the Prime Minister

A classic example was the use of these illegal billboards which were the same as those used by the Labour Party for its electoral campaign.

“This is incest. No one should be above the law, neither the government, the Labour Party or the Prime Minister,” Dr Busuttil said as he quoted a story published in Times of Malta revealing that the billboards being used by Labour were illegal.

Closing a party event, Dr Busuttil said the Prime Minister was insulting people’s intelligence by saying his party was the underdog. This was after it had won an election by 36,000 votes.

“If he is the underdog what are we? We respect people’s intelligence.

“This election is not about me or [Prime Minister] Joseph Muscat, it is an election to elect people to represent us in the European Parliament, which is our Parliament too,” he said.

Dr Busuttil lambasted the government for halting the previous government’s partnerships with private hospital to alleviate the burden on Mater Dei but praised it for “realising that the PN’s policies were the best way forward for this country”. He was referring to the announcement that MRI scans will be carried out in private hospitals to reduce waiting lists.

Dr Busuttil said it was “scandalous” how the government was discriminating between patients according to their political beliefs by providing medicines to those who were closest to the Labour Party.

Turning to finances, he questioned where the €373 million increase in national debt had gone and also how the deficit figure in the first three months this year had increased by €60 million. “How incompetent do you have to be?” he asked.

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