The Nationalist Party today launched a billboard to stress its position that Joseph Muscat will freeze the minimum wage.

Dr Muscat immediately replied by announcing that he will be instituting libel proceedings against Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi and all those in the PN who are conducting a campaign claiming that Labour would freeze the minimum wage.

During the launch of the PN billboard, Finance Minister Tonio Fenech and parliamentary assistant Beppe Fenech Adami said that Dr Muscat first proposed a living wage and now he was saying he would not increase the minimum wage. This, they said, was a massive U-turn.

Mr Fenech said that Dr Muscat's statements last week meant a  wage freeze and showed that the PL had not changed any of its policies of the 1980s.

In his reaction, Dr Muscat told a press conference that this was manifestly untrue and all those who attended the Labour Congress last week could testify that he had never said that the minimum wage would be frozen.

Dr Muscat said Dr Gonzi's claims were the worst sort of politics, the sort of politics which the people were fed up of.

He reiterated that economic growth should take priority over a raising of the minimum wage, but cost of living increases would not be touched.

Dr Muscat said it was Dr Gonzi who last froze wages, for example in the case of Air Malta and IPSL.

Furthermore, after Caritas called for a raising of the minimum wage, the prime minister himself had said that raising the minimum wage would not necessarily solve the problems which Caritas had mentioned.

Meanwhile, the PL today issued its own new billboards, one of which is seen below.