Lawrence Gonzi made an appeal yesterday to hurt and disgruntled Nationalists to look at the bigger picture while pledging to change the way problems were tackled.

“I assure them that the hurt will be addressed if they were wronged,” Dr Gonzi said in a brief interview on Net TV.

Just a week away from election day, the Prime Minister reached out to Nationalists who feel they have been wronged, highlighting the importance of choice and of keeping in mind the country’s future and the sustainability of jobs.

He pointed out that other countries were facing economic difficulties and people there were losing their pensions, free medicines and jobs.

“Let us work together and I promise this: we want to find a solution to individual issues so people will get the answer they have been waiting for, avoiding the panic that ensues before an election. This has to change,” he said.

The Nationalist Party would bring about sustainable change in the way such problems were tackled, he added.

Turning to the oil procurement scandal, Dr Gonzi said he always allowed the police to handle such issues because they had the power to arrest people and hold interrogations.

He always passed on to the police any information he received, Dr Gonzi added, noting that Opposition leader Joseph Muscat “hid information” about drug trafficking not to embarrass the Labour Party’s Safi club committee.

He said that Dr Muscat’s deputy leader, Toni Abela, approached a Labourite police officer telling him not to proceed on the case.

“I will continue doing my duty. Don’t play with fire with us because we will take all the information we would have to the judicial authorities and they will investigate, whoever that person may be,” Dr Gonzi warned.

Saying he got the people’s message, Dr Gonzi also pledged that Cabinet ministers’ salaries would not be increased in the next legislature.