The government and the Opposition were close to reaching an agreement on citizenship but the government should accept the fact that its proposal had been wrong and the scheme needed changing, Opposition leader Simon Busuttil said this morning.
Speaking during an interview on Radio 101, Dr Busuttil said it was not just the Opposition that was saying so but everyone, including one of the government’s ministers.
Dr Muscat said spoke on the decision by Public Broadcasting Services not to report Finance Minister Edward Scicluna’s address in the European Parliament and said that the PN was to insist with its complaint by taking the matter to the Broadcasting Authority.
The PN would insist that this attitude adopted by PBS not to report on the matter so as not to embarrass the government should be censured.
The government, he said, should have listened before it messed up because the country’s reputation was badly shaken.
The Opposition, he said, wanted to reach an agreement on the matter to assist the government repair the damage it had done.
Dr Busuttil also spoke on irregular migration and said that in spite of Dr Muscat’s criticism to the voluntary burden sharing agreement when he was in opposition, the Nationalist government had managed to transfer 700 immigrants to EU countries and 1,300 to the US.
This government had not yet managed to transfer one person, he noted adding that he expected the government not to come out of the December summit without a compulsory burden sharing agreement.
He also said that the Prime Minister’s attitude on this matter had also damaged Malta’s reputation abroad.
On same sex unions, the Nationalist Party agreed that the time had come for the country to have a law that would regularise same sex unions.
This had been a tough decision for the PN but it had taken it. However, it wanted greater differentiation to be made between marriages and same sex unions.
So it was proposing two sets of amendments to the law, one set dealing with such issues, the other set dealing with adoption by gay couples.
The Opposition, he said, did not want to rush into allowing such adoptions and wanted a study to be held before they were introduced.
“Let’s not play around with children’s rights and their protection,” he said adding that a social impact study on gay adoptions should be held to see whether Malta was ready for such adoptions and allow the subject time to mature.
Asked about President George Abela’s appeal for a wider consensus to be reached about the new President, Dr Busuttil said he perfectly agreed with this statement.
Dr Abela, he said, had been an exemplary President and his clarity in this statement was courageous. The government, Dr Busuttil said, should remember Dr Abela’s words when it was time to nominate the new President so that Dr Abela’s experience of a President who was accepted by the whole country could be repeated.
Dr Busuttil spoke in detail about the proposed amendments to the PN’s statute and thanked the Commission for its work.