The Nationalist Party has the moral authority to call for Labour deputy leader Toni Abela's resignation because it never told the police not to proceed against someone but always took action on allegations, PN deputy leader Simon Busuttil said yesterday.
"We have moral authority to ask people to resign because we never did anything of the sort. When we saw things happening, we asked for investigations. We never had scandals of this sort," he said when asked during a political press conference organised by the Broadcasting Authority.
He did not reply when asked why the police had not taken action when they had the recording in hand. "You have to ask police commissioner why he did not take action. I insist that political parties should not interfere in investigations and the police commissioner should be autonomous."
During the event, which was about education, Dr Busuttil spoke about achievements in the sector and about the party's plans in the field. He mentioned the pledge to give all school children, teacher and learning support assistant a tablet not merely as a gadget but as a tool for a quality leap in education.
Dr Busuttil spoke about the number of school leavers who continue post secondary education which had increase to 83 per cent from 45 per cent 10 years ago.
He also spoke about the "courageous" reform in the education system and the "enormous" investment in building a new schools every year in the past five years.
On stipends, Dr Busuttil said that while The PN was clear on its plans to strengthen the system, the Labour Party was vague.
Asked about the oil procurement scandal, Dr Busuttil said every allegation of corruption was always taken seriously and referred to the police for investigation.
"After March 9, Malta needs to have a government which takes action and not one which is more focused on mud slinging," he said, adding that the general election will be the forum for people to judge.
"We will respect people's judgement on March 9 on who took proper action on corruption," he said.