Undecided voters who stayed home on March 9 would be “saying thanks to those who tried to run roughshod over you these past five years,” Labour leader Joseph Muscat said.
Addressing what was undoubtedly the largest PL crowd of the campaign so far, Dr Muscat yesterday urged those still lukewarm to Labour to take the plunge and seize the “once-in-lifetime opportunity to write a new chapter in this nation’s history”.
He called on the thousands gathered at Floriana’s granaries to ignore polls and predictions which put Labour ahead. “Surveys and numbers count for nothing in elections. It is only votes that matter,” he said.
Dr Muscat’s speech was neatly divided into a series of sectoral appeals, each one aimed at a distinct part of the electorate. The PL’s educational programme would be geared towards investing in teachers and their skill set, he said, while the party considered student stipends “as important an investment as any other”.
He told youths that the Prime Minister, in dismissing talk of youth unemployment, considered them irrelevant. “There are 4,600 young men and women out of work. To us, you are not irrelevant,” Dr Muscat said.
The elderly deserved a respectable pension, he said, drawing parallels between meagre pensions and the €500 weekly honoraria issue.
That comparison drew a roar of approval, as did Dr Muscat’s subsequent pledge to not raise law-makers’ wages. “First the people, then the politicians,” he said.
A PL in government was so confident of cutting down hospital waiting lists that it would pay for patients’ treatment at private clinics if waiting times were overrun, he added.
Saying that the disabled “need rights, not pity,” Dr Muscat said community living arrangements for them would be at the heart of the party’s drive for social justice.
Deputy leader Louis Grech derided the PN as a party in denial, which “believes it has a divine right to govern this country”.
Danish indie pop band A Friend in London entertained the crowd, who cheered loudly when adopted PL anthem A New Tomorrow filtered through the stack speakers.