Former Prime Minister Alfred Sant has called for the Labour government to be given another mandate, warning that with EU funds starting to wind down, it was important to maintain the unprecedented economic momentum.
"What is going to happen at the end of the campaign as a new government is being constituted? There will still be three weeks to go before the end of the Maltese presidency of the European Union. They'll be over in an instant. After that, the challenge will remain of how to sustain the current economic upsurge," he said in a statement.
The MEP was this weekend very blunt about the addition of former Nationalist Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando as a Labour Party candidate, saying dismissively that he would prefer to vote for Żaren Bonnici, known as Tal-Ajkla, than for him.
The two have been at loggerheads since 2008, when Dr Pullicino Orlando had applied for a permit for an open-air disco at Mistra, and Dr Sant – then in Opposition – had described the application as “scandalous, immersed in corruption, obscene and protected the interest of a small clique”. Dr Pullicino Orlando had since lost a libel case against Dr Sant over the comments.
I got to know that [the PN] had sent ‘envoys’ to ensure that a wide-ranging resistance to the proposal would be mobilised
Dr Sant, writing for some online news portals, referred with a tinge of bitterness about PN proposals to appoint a special investigative magistrate with greater powers of inquiry. He pointed out that this was one of the proposals his legislature in 1996-1998 had actually proposed but which the PN at the time had lobbied to squash.
"Confidentially, I got to know that [the PN] had sent ‘envoys’ to ensure that a wide-ranging resistance to the proposal would be mobilised. And curiously, almost on cue, the message came back from the judiciary that it was not in agreement with the idea, which caused it discomfort. Likewise from representatives of lawyers. They all wanted the idea dead and buried."
Dr Sant said the excuse was that the proposal was not consonant with the structures that regulate the administration of justice and the judiciary – and with the inter-relationship between prosecution and defence.
"Now the PN has itself come up with the same proposal. What has changed structurally since 1997?" asked the Maltese MEP.