PN leader Simon Busuttil gave an upbeat speech.

The Nationalist Party’s general council yesterday approved a statute aimed at allowing it to expand its grassroots base and open its doors to all, including people not active in politics.

Closing a four-day meeting of the general council that approved tens of amendments to the statute, leader Simon Busuttil gave an upbeat speech in which he said the changes would transform the PN into a people’s party. It would provide the tools for the PN to continue regaining the trust of the majority of the electorate.

“We are undergoing a silent revolution. The PN is once again providing a direction as to how politics should be done,” he said.

‘Everyone is welcome with our party’

“We are providing a platform to all those who want to contribute towards a better county.

Principles remain principles and will never be for sale

“From tomorrow we will start working on making these new tools achieve results. Everyone is welcome because the PN is truly a people’s party.”

Dr Busuttil said that despite the negative electoral result last March, the party had already managed to find its feet and embark on radical reforms to become the people’s party once again.

On the other hand, Labour was every week showing itself to be incompetent to govern and was ridiculing the country abroad.

Referring to the latest changes in the citizenship scheme, Dr Busuttil said the Prime Minister’s declaration that he had already offered the insertion of a year’s residency clause in the citizenship programme was “a blatant lie”.

While insisting that the government had always resisted the introduction of any form of effective bond to the country, he revealed that, during negotiations with the Opposition, Home Affairs Minister Manuel Mallia had declared he would resign from Parliament if a single day of residence was included as a condition in the programme.

“So now we expect Dr Mallia to stick to his promise and present his immediate resignation,” Dr Busuttil said to a standing ovation.

Reiterating that the PN would soon take a position on the scheme once the government published it’s fourth version of the legal notice, he warned that for his party “principles remain principles and will never be for sale”.

Criticising the Prime Minister for saying that the insertion of residency in the scheme was just a negotiating tactic, Dr Busuttil said Dr Muscat was either not telling the truth or was incompetent.

“This is not Russian roulette, Mr Prime Minister,” he said. “Was it worth ridiculing the country for four long months to play a game?”

While his party was satisfied that the government had to give in to orders from Brussels, it would be making sure that what was agreed would be implemented to the letter by the government, including a full 12 months of residency.

“Under Labour there’s never a dull moment,” he said referring to political events of the past week.

Through its attitude on the Lino Farrugia Sacco impeachment case, the government had rubbished any intention of implementing a meaningful justice reform.

Accusing the Prime Minister of intentionally using procedure to make sure that the “misbehaved” judge would retire before he could be sacked, Dr Busuttil said Labour had once again chosen to protect its friends rather than doing what was right.

The Prime Minister, he said, failed to stick to his promise of respecting the conclusions of the Commission for the Administration of Justice. “The right thing to do would have been to sack the judge for misbehaviour, as the commission recommended, and not defend him because his son was a Labour candidate.”

The electorate was increasingly looking at a government unprepared to govern and which had no sense of direction.

He launched an appeal for Labour to make sure it tackled rising unemployment and made a plea for the government to heed the people’s demands in the south by rethinking its plan to place a gas storage facility in Marsaxlokk harbour adjacent to the power station.

In a statement the government “absolutely disapproved” of the way Dr Busuttil was turning the Farrugia Sacco case into a political football, when he knew the Prime Minister had done his best to move the impeachment motion forward. Parliament must follow the law, it said.

It was the Speaker, on a request by the Opposition, who had given the ruling – on legal advice – saying the original motion was “dead” and if revised would have to go through the procedures contemplated at law.

Did Dr Busuttil want both sides of the House to defy the Speaker and place Parliament in an indefensible position before a foreign court, the government asked, calling for maturity from the Opposition Leader.

In its own statement, the Labour Party called on Dr Busuttil to choose the national above partisan interest and withdraw his stand against the investor programme. He was still threatening to withdraw citizenships from investors despite the advice of constitutional experts that this would be illegal, it said.