The people are being robbed every day as fuel prices stay high in Malta while they collapse internationally, Opposition leader Simon Busuttil said this morning.
Speaking in a Radio 101 interview, Dr Busuttil said it was unacceptable for prices at the pump in Malta to be reduced by a pittance when they had collapsed abroad.
"The people are being robbed every day, every time they call at a petrol station to fill up," Dr Busuttil said.
Oil prices, he said, were now the lowest in 11 years, and a third, or a quarter what they had been under the PN government.
Any yet the government employed a lot of fanfare for small reduction prices reductions and expected to be thanked for them.
It was ridiculous, Dr Busuttil said, that the government spoke about price stability as benefiting consumers. Consumers only benefited when prices were kept low and not when they were kept high.
Malta, he said, had a prime minister who was an actor in a soap opera. The people, however, were seeing through this falsity. In Luxembourg, for example, fuel was at €1 a litre when salaries were four times that of Malta.
CORRUPTION
Questioned about corruption, Dr Busuttil said it was shameful that last week Owen Bonnici, minister of justice, of all things, could not reply directly on whether he has confidence in former acting police commissioner Ray Zammit, now the head of the local enforcement agency.
Ray Zammit was involved in some of the worse scandals of the past two years including the Manuel Mallia driver shooting, the acquisition of three plots of government land for €18,600 and involvement in business with the Gaffarena family. What power did this person have? Did he know something about the prime minister?
To add insult to injury, this was now the person responsible for the local enforcement agency. How could he have moral authority to lead this agency, given his record?
Moreover, Dr Bonnici was not worthy of being a minister given his defence. Or was it only those in the Pn who made some mistake who were expected to resign and leave parliament?
In Germany recently, when there were a number of assaults on women in Cologne, the head of police was dismissed. In Malta, within a period of three months, three people under custody died but no commissioner or, more importantly, no minister resigned.
And yet the prime minister said Malta should be the best in Europe.
OPPOSITION STILL EXPECTS IAN BORG TO GO
Another case in relation to corruption was that of Parliamentary Secretary Ian Borg. The Opposition still expected him to shoulder political responsibility for the condemnation he had received from the Ombudsman and the Commission against Corruption over the way Mepa had issued building permits for him. And if Mepa respected the Ombudsman, it should withdraw the permits.
The Opposition expected Dr Borg to resign from his post and from parliament, which was the same standard which the Pl adopted for the PN.
The Ombudsman had said the permits were issued by devious methods and the commission had adopted the report, adding that corruption had not be proven to the level required for a criminal prosecution. That was different from saying there was no corruption, as the commission had done in a case involving former minister Jason Azzopardi.
Dr Busuttil underlined the importance of the PN Convention on the environment, which will be held next weekend. The bottom line, he said, was that the Opposition wanted to the people to have a better quality if life and the environment was an important element in this.