Through its behaviour about the St Philip’s Hospital deal, the government is admitting is failure in the health sector, Opposition leader Joseph Muscat said this morning.
Speaking in Xghajra, he said that an unequivocal, clear majority in Parliament was telling the government that the lease of St Philips needed to be debated in Parliament with urgency.
But rather than listen to what the representatives of the people were saying in the country’s highest institution, GonziPN decided, in the most arrogant manner possible, to go ahead with the contract.
Yesterday evening the government announced that the signing of the hospital deal will go ahead and that the agreement for the lease of the hospital has to be signed immediately because of the acute shortage of beds for rehabilitation purposes.
Dr Muscat said that this clearly showed the need to modernise the Parliamentary system, noting, that faced with such situations, one could not blame the people for losing their trust in politics.
For while Parliamentary approval was needed to give some village club or another an obscure room somewhere, none was needed for the signing of this deal which would cost at least €12 million.
Dr Muscat asked who was responsible for this pointing out that Mater Dei, which took 15 years to build, had cost the country more than €600 million, practically double the original estimate.
After just four years, the government was now saying that another hospital was needed – St Luke’s had at least lasted 70 years, before a new hospital was needed.
Responsibility, Dr Muscat said, had to be shouldered by those who took the decisions.
He noted that the government was saying that the deal had to be signed immediately because this was an urgent matter. If this had become so urgent just before the election, it destroyed the government’s credibility in the health sector, where he made the biggest financial and planning mismanagement in this legislature.
He recalled that, on the eve of the last election, the government had invited everyone to visit Mater Dei which had to last at least a generation.
Dr Muscat said he did not care who the hospital belonged to, what he was interested in was what was best for the people.
The matter, he said, showed that the PN government had failed and was being disrespectful to parliament and the people.
Dr Muscat appealed for the people to have courage, asked them to remain calm and patient and remain united.
GOVERNMENT RISKING COUNTRY'S STABILITY
Earlier, Dr Muscat accused the government of playing with the country’s stability.
One of the government’s MPs had been warning the Prime Minister, for weeks, that if a particular minister stayed on in Parliament, he would not have his vote for the budget.
This was when the government was already in coalition, as, on its own, it did not enjoy a majority.
The government, Dr Muscat said, had driven itself to a wall and the Prime Minister was risking starting a new year without an approved budget, denying the country the stability it needed at this time of international recession and new European and Eurozone rules.
Starting the New Year without a budget meant that the government would be endangering jobs, education, health, pensions and the country's social and economic foundations.
The government still had a little time in which to rectify this situation. It was clear, however, that it was committed to play the political game and put the clique before the country.
The government, Dr Muscat said, was committed to take the country to an official or unofficial electoral campaign at Christmas time, the time most important for businesses as it was when they determined whether they had had a profitable year.
Dr Muscat appealed to the Prime Minister to be responsible and stop putting the party before the country. The PM, he said, had a duty to move the budget and this was what the Opposition wanted so that it could hold the government responsible for what was written.
The Prime Minister had said that the budget vote was one of confidence so it could not seek the PL’s help as the PL did not have confidence in this Prime Minister or this government.
Dr Muscat welcomed the naming of Valletta’s as European Culture Capital 2018 and confirmed that a new Labour government would make all the necessary resources available for the bid to leave behind a legacy that would go further than 2018.