Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi sought to overcome the fact that his party faces the election as an incumbent, casting it as Malta’s catalyst of change.
Addressing a cheering crowd of Nationalist Party supporters on the Granaries, in Floriana last night, Dr Gonzi spoke of the months ahead, before the legislature comes to an end. However, the atmosphere at the Independence Day celebrations was clearly that of an election campaign.
Nonetheless, he reiterated that his party would keep governing as long as it had the support of the House.
He paid tribute to the architect of Independence, George Borg Olivier, quoting from a speech in which he had encouraged the Maltese to face the challenges ahead with confidence and pride.
“Don’t measure your pride against the size of our territory but against your ideas and the vision you have for this country and the belief that you chart your destiny,” Dr Gonzi said paraphrasing his predecessor.
“We are the change that is good for you. We are the change that you want. This has been the cry of the Nationalist Party and we recast it today,” Dr Gonzi said.
The theme plays into the campaign the PN has been using against Labour in which it sought to cast the other side as burdened with old faces, linked to the party’s past.
Dr Gonzi did not speak much about Labour’s past, leaving some of that to the party’s general secretary, Paul Borg Olivier, who spoke before him. But he reminded his audience of Joseph Muscat’s role in Labour’s campaign against EU membership before he became party leader.
“Today, you can listen to a lot of nice words from people who recently sung a different tune,” he said without ever naming the Labour leader. “It is the Nationalist Party that brought to port the EU vision. The PN had the courage to do this. We did not say Switzerland in the Mediterranean but Malta in the EU. For us, for our children and our country,” he said.
The PN was consistently on the right side of history, he said, arguing that it was no coincidence but the result of the fact that the party had consistently been guided by values, which were the same as those of the Maltese people.
“Today, those who have no values or the wrong values are ashamed of their history. Even worse, they are trying to rewrite history. We don’t need to do this because our history is written in gold,” he said. Dr Gonzi said he rejected the argument made by some that speaking about values is old fashioned, stressing instead that the turbulent times we were living in required a strong compass with which to chart the way ahead.
“How can you trust someone who makes decisions on the basis of their popularity? How can you trust someone who is promising everything to everyone” he asked, warning voters against being “duped”.
It is the PN values that have secured its vision and its pursuit of change throughout its history, Dr Gonzi said, stressing that this same ideal was etched in the moral fibre of the Maltese nation.