Six months after being elected to Government, reality is catching up with the Labour Party who is now finding it hard to deliver on its promises, Opposition leader Simon Busuttil said this evening.
He added that the outlook is not so bright, following the news that credit rating agency Fitch downgraded Malta from 'A+' to 'A'. "This does not bode well for job creation" he said.
The PN leader was being interviewed by Media Today managing editor Saviour Balzan as part of the Independence Day activities.
Some of Mr Balzan's questions including those on the PN's track record in Government, prompted remarks from the partisan crowd, with the PN leader immediately intervening to stop further embarrassment for the organisers.
The PN leader acknowledged that the party underestimated the PL and its leader, and that Joseph Muscat managed to sell himself to the electorate and was a "good salesman".
"However the Labour Party has now to prove itself in Government," Dr Busuttil said. He added that the first six months of Labour highlighted the differences between both parties which the PL had concealed before the election. "Reality is starting to catch up with Labour" and the Malta Taghna Lkoll slogan has become a joke, he said.
Dr Busuttil said that the election was lost for a number of reasons highlighted in the defeat report. These varied from individual cases to the fact that the PN had spent so many years in Government. He said that after a thorough soul searching exercise the party was now looking ahead.
The PN leader said that the party must learn from its mistakes and that the most important thing was that it learnt its lesson.
He said that the PN-led Government was too focused on the macro situation. The party's current financial woes highlighted the fact that the PN did not profit from the fact that it was in Government.
Dr Busuttil said that from the end of this month the party would be in a break-even situation and its employees would be paid on time. However, he said that the challenge now was to address the long standing debts.
Probed about the issue of meritocracy he acknowledged that the record of PN governments on this matter could have been better. Nevertheless, he said that the PL was elected with a strong mandate of meritocracy but was now running roughshod on this principle with the recent army promotions and a number of ministers whose wives were handed a top Government post.
If he were elected to Government in five years time, Dr Busuttil said that he would seek consensus on a number of appointments such as those of Police Commissioner and Army Chief.
Regarding the agreement with China, the PN leader said that he had no qualms about foreign investors injecting funds in Enemalta, but in this case he questioned the manner in which the partial privatisation was being handled.
He noted that no public call was made. This was only previously done in the case of HSBC because the Government had wanted to attract a world renowned bank. Dr Busuttil said that another reason for his reservations was that Enemalta employees were deceived. He also claimed that the agreement had been in the offing since before the general election.
The PN leader justified Enemalta's debt saying this was the price to pay for modernising the country's infrastructure, apart from the increase in fuel prices in recent years which made the situation worse.
He added that the PN had plans for a special purpose vehicle to tackle the corporation's debts apart from a number of Enemalta assets like the large tract of land in Marsa.
Asked about the case of a man mistakenly arraigned in court, the PN leader said that its defence of police inspector Elton Taliana had nothing to do with his political beliefs but with the fact "that this was a travesty of justice" as Mr Taliana had arraigned the right man. Dr Busuttil said that after the "political appointment" of the Police Commissioner, the Government was doing the same mistake with the army chief.
On Enemalta's oil procurement he said that from Public Accounts Committee hearings it emerged that no PN ministers were involved in any criminal activity.
Asked about the Armier boathouses, Dr Busuttil was non-committal and said the party had yet to take a stand.