We are now half-way through an election campaign, a campaign we should not be having in the first place. You will ask, like many have been asking me this week, why it is that I am talking all the time about the corruption of the Prime Minister and his two trusted men and how they deceived a nation which four years ago was full of hope for a Malta Tagħna Lkoll.
I keep talking about it because we should not be having an election on June 3. In a normal country, when a political figure is under a criminal investigation, they then resign. In a normal country a prime minister whose chief of staff is accused of money laundering would resign. In a normal country, the main institutions of the country would have snapped into action to ensure that democracy is upheld, but even these have been hijacked by the government and silenced into non-action. However, Malta is not a normal country any more.
Malta was last week described by The Economist as a “shady island”; by The Guardian as a “source of anxiety and embarrassment”; and by Italy’s ItaliaOggi as the “Panama of Europe”. Money laundering, political corruption, illegal kickbacks, dirty money, a crime novel, a mafia movie are all phrases which have been tagged to the name of our country overnight.
If we take the time to look at the long-term implications of this, we would immediately realise the impact it will all have on the financial services industry and the domino effect it will have on several other key industries. With a dark cloud over its reputation, Malta’s economy will be dealt a fatal blow. In this short electoral campaign, let us never forget that. Let us also not forget that this election could have been prevented had Muscat taken a step back and resigned, allowing the Labour party to keep on governing. But instead Muscat chose to forge on.
Forza Nazzjonali gives us all the opportunity to unite together to oust once and for all the people whose pockets come before the country
This election is not a competition of proposals. I cannot stress that enough even as we are rolling out one set after the next of exciting new plans for the country – plans we have been working on since I took the oath as Leader of the Opposition four years ago. I pledged then that I would make the PN a party of the people again.
I rolled up my sleeves and did just that; went back to the roots. I have spent the last four years talking to people in their homes. People who over the years had been hurt by the party they so loved; people who wanted to see the PN unshackled by uncreative restraints; people who wanted more justice and fairness. Many a time I could not even find the appropriate words to apologise, but each time I was touched and energised by people’s hope to see a party deserving of our country.
I resolved to kill the PN’s detachment from people, for the sake of the country. We changed the party structures, we turned it into one which truly represents the society we live in: we opened up, we embraced people from all walks of life, colour, gender and race. Above all we started working on our vision of Malta with the aim of killing mediocrity once and for all.
It is for this reason that I am promising that all top appointments in the country – from president to commissioner of police – will no longer be chosen by the Prime Minister but by Parliament acting on a two-thirds majority. I emphasise that I want good governance to be entrenched in the Constitution once and for all.
We have so far launched exciting proposals on pensions, housing, the elderly, workers, families, retail business and more; we are building on this government’s boost to civil liberties, and improving on it; we launched 100 proposals for Gozo, including giving back to the Gozitans’ their public hospital which was snatched away and privatised by yet another Mizzi-Schembri shady deal.
We will be launching more and more proposals in these coming weeks and I am enthusiastic and confident that they will be well received. I urge you all to read about them on forzanazzjonali.com.
But this is an election at an extraordinary time. I am aware that many of you have given up on politicians. I don’t blame you – after being dulled and disillusioned by a party in government for too long, four years ago we were promised a government of meritocracy and transparency. We got none of that; we got far worse.
It is for this reason that I am etching my pledges in concrete proposals, which I will start enacting the minute we are elected. It is also for this reason that I opened the PN to the possibility of joining other parties. This will keep me under constant scrutiny as a prime minister and there is nothing that I want more.
This coalition, this Forza Nazzjonali, gives us all the opportunity to unite together to oust once and for all the people whose pockets come before the country and to focus our energy on truly making Malta a better place.
This is not an election between parties. In this election our choice is between Joseph Muscat and Malta.
I choose Malta.