Up to March 2013 the Nationalist Party considered poverty in Malta to be just a ‘perception’. All of a sudden, after March 2013, and particularly after May 2014, poverty in Malta has become a reality.

Lately, we have been bombarded by the PN with NSO statistics about the number of people living under or very near the poverty line, which amount to around 99,000.

Simon Busuttil and his team thought they had some very potent ammunition to fire at the Labour government. So they instructed MP Clyde Puli to address a press conference, in which he tried to give the impression that the poverty figures were due to the Labour government. In actual fact, the NSO report referred to the situation in 2012, the last full year of the former PN government.

These are the same people who had predicted that if Labour wins the election, business in Malta would come to a standstill and within a year Joseph Muscat would go to Brussels begging for a bailout.

And the Leader of the Opposition feels offended when he and his party are accused of negativism in their criticism.