The Prime Minister cannot continue to govern as if nothing has happened, Opposition leader Simon Busuttil said today with reference to the Panama Papers scandal.
Speaking in Parliament on the Budget vote for the Office of the Prime Minister, Dr Busuttil asked why the police had not investigated Minister Konrad Mizzi and the PM's chief of staff Keith Schembri.
He asked what had happened to the report by the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit, whose director general had resigned.
Dr Busuttil said people were not making ends meet. The government had failed in its transparency test and was tainted with corruption. These issues were not addressed by the Prime Minister and the PN was confident it would be the electorate in the next general election which would pass judgement and choose in the best interest of Malta.
Earlier, Dr Busuttil said the Economic Survey revealed that the pay of 70,000 workers, including 25,000 in the retail sector, had been eroded to the point that they could not make ends meet.
He referred to transparency in the publication of public contracts and said that in the published contracts of the Gozo, St Luke's and Karen Grech hospitals had so many blank pages that one could not even make out the identity of the new owners.
Turning to the cost of electricity, Dr Busuttil said that Malta would be paying through the nose for electricity supplied by Electrogas, when the interconnector provided cheaper energy.
The government also had to ensure that the gas tanker was risk-free. He said that at a consultation meeting yesterday, the captain of the vessel ensured that the tanker could withstand a terrorist attack but then consultants were not able to say whether permission would still be given for letting off fireworks.
Dr Busuttil invited the government to sit with the Opposition to find how pensioners could be given all medicines they needed for free. In its electoral manifesto, he said, the PN had suggested that the government would give patients the equivalent of the money it paid to buy the generics to enable them to buy the medicine they needed.