Labour leader Joseph Muscat yesterday urged Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi to use tomorrow’s Nationalist Party executive committee meeting to solve his party’s crisis and that of the country.
He said he was giving Dr Gonzi “the benefit of the doubt and of time” to solve the problems that the Labour Party had warned last November would escalate.
“In November, we had said the problems would grow and they did. A problem with one (MP) has now grown into a problem with three (MPs). And the situation will not end here and will continue to balloon unless (Dr) Gonzi takes the decisions he knows he should be taking,” Dr Muscat told a political activity in Żejtun.
The PN executive is due to meet tomorrow evening to consider and decide on MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s claims that Richard Cachia Caruana “colluded” with Labour in 1996 and should, therefore, be expelled from the party.
Dr Muscat said this was one of Dr Gonzi’s “last opportunities” to solve the instability.
“The more time you waste, the worse it is going to get. If you continue to waste time clinging on to power, you’re going to drown and take the whole party down with you,” he said.
Dr Muscat spoke at length about the difference between the PN and his political movement and the different ways of doing politics.
While the PN was closing its doors and being led by “a shrinking clique”, the Labour Party was becoming a wider and all-embracing movement.
He warned against giving too much weight to surveys predicting a landslide win for the PL and argued that more work had to be done to welcome more people and make them feel like the PL was their natural home.
He said the party was making its final preparations to “beef up” its electoral manifesto against the backdrop of the country’s financial problems and the economic situation in Europe and in the world.
“We know that GonziPN will promise everything to everyone, including the possibility of reducing utility bills. Will we not fool people and then bring excuses that we could not deliver. We will give a clear, positive road map rather than a wish list,” he said.
He made this promise against a proviso: the inheritance of big financial problems, left by “amateurs” who did not know how to manage the country’s finances.