Nationalist Party leader Simon Busuttil said yesterday he wanted to cooperate with the government on issues of national security but called for a stop to the Opposition being “bombed” every time it spoke.
He refuted claims he was scaremongering or had instilled an element of fear in people, saying what he had declared was against a backdrop of a government that had literally “opened the floodgates” for foreigners entering Malta for visas.
Dr Busuttil, who is in Canada, said in a recorded interview on the party’s station Radio 101 that national security was paramount and the government was right to re-establish border controls during and after the EU-Africa summit and the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
The decision was taken against a backdrop of security threats across Europe, especially after the terrorist attacks by Islamic State operatives in Paris on November13.
However, Dr Busuttil said, this had to be seen within the context of the granting of 7,000 visas in 18 months to applicants from Algeria.
Malta was receiving planeloads of people, and no one knew what had become of them, he said.
He said that there were a number of questions that remained unanswered, such as those about the high number of applications submitted as soon as the new Maltese consulate opened in Algiers, about the person selected to run the consulate and his relationship with Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, as well as questions about the advertisements concerning how people could buy visas to Malta.
Just as worrying, he said, was how 14,000 residence permits were issued last year for non-EU nationals. What had become of these people? he asked.
Whenever we raise these issues, which the government obviously does not like, the Opposition is bombarded with accusations, insulted and even called names. This has to stop
“These are all threats to our national security. And yet, whenever we raise these issues, which the government obviously does not like, the Opposition is bombarded with accusations, insulted and even called names. This has to stop,” he said.
“This aggressiveness was exposed also when [former] Labour MP Marlene Farrugia [who is now an independent MP] criticised the government in Parliament. A government MP told her he would bash her up.
“Such aggressive behaviour had been going on over the past two years, but the threats levelled at Dr Farrugia took such aggression to a new level,” Dr Busuttil said.
People could now realise that what the Opposition had been saying about the government was true.
The aggressive behaviour, coming from the oldest, most experienced Labour MP, set a bad example and undermined the dignity of the House.
He said the subsequent ruling of House Speaker Anġlu Farrugia was “adding insult to injury”.
The debate last Wednesday on an Opposition motion about the ruling had confirmed that the Opposition was right, with Mr Debono Grech having issued a letter of apology, thus assuming responsibility.
Turning to the PN’s recently-released document on the economy, Dr Busuttil said this was an example of how the party was ready to govern, because no party in Opposition had made such concrete proposals over the past 25 years.
He said that it constituted a pledge that, under a Nationalist administration, wealth would be redistributed fairly and the economy would become a “well-oiled machine”.