The Nationalist Party is offering the electorate on Saturday a new vision for our country, one which looks beyond the forthcoming election towards Malta 2015. It does not stop at the historic achievements it has made for our country but looks ahead with great confidence, new ideas and resources and a new generation ready to give its full contribution. It is aimed at ensuring Malta becoming a regional centre of excellence in various important areas.
The Maltese have always trusted the PN to implement big changes because it does so with the full cooperation of all stakeholders, especially the young. We guarantee progress can continue and move ahead through liberty and stability. The present positive economic climate of growth can only be sustained without "freezing" the economy or re-opening negotiations with the EU, as Labour will certainly do.
The electorate has realised how static the MLP is, with a leadership still dreaming of its old ideas of partnership instead of dynamic membership within the EU; of devaluation of our currency instead of confidence in the capability in our economy to make the most of the opportunities which the eurozone opens up; of imposing on our young children a repeater class instead of ensuring the necessary attention to enable all children to progress.
Theirs is a leadership with ideas that have been voted out by the electorate more than once. They are incapable of giving way to the new within their own party. Little chance exists that they will open to the new in the country.
The PN does not insult students; it respects their intelligence. It does not consider students as abject simply for being critical - as all students are expected to be - but sees in them the guarantee for this country's future. A Nationalist government will go much further than it has already done in allowing them to develop their intelligence and education through renewed sustained investment and opportunity.
A new mandate to the PN allows a process of regeneration, necessary to continue the momentum of progress felt by all sectors of the Maltese society. The electorate, therefore, becomes part of the process of regeneration by selecting the party in government which has the right vision and credibility to continue on the road of progress.
The Labour leadership is instead still riddled with former ministers who had served in the Mintoff and Mifsud Bonnici years of the 1970s and 1980s when the state decided everything.
These monuments to the old are living proof that they are bankrupt in ideas and vision. Without "regrets", they moved from the politics of "Cain and Abel" to Partnership. When the electorate threw out these antiquated policies, they still lacked the political goodwill to express regrets for their proven-wrong policies. "No regrets" to opposition to EU membership, to local councils, to pluralism in broadcasting, to a liberalised economy, to freedom of choice in education and in health services. "No regrets" to the student worker scheme, to the removal of stipends and to the years of economic stagnation reflective of the years when Alfred Sant was president of his party and, more recently, Prim Minister.
All people err but to err and have no regrets is a sure way of knowing that such person will err again.
The PN may have erred in not sufficiently protecting the environment in the face of the rapid development taking place in Malta and in not sufficiently safeguarding the interests of the occupants of such towns and villages where construction is a common every day event. Lawrence Gonzi's declaration that the environment will be allocated €300 million in the next legislature from the EU funds awarded to Malta and that the reform of Mepa will fall under his wing, shows that, contrary to Alfred Sant, he does not labour under a "no regrets" policy.
The PN was capable of joining freedom with economic development; of executing the great steps forward in education for all with the freedom of choice for all parents; of developing free enterprise and guaranteeing social justice.
This second millennium is finally the time for our country to reap the benefit of the hard work we all made towards making Malta a modern democratic state, an EU member.
Now lies the next challenge, for we did not enter the EU for the sake of being members but to ensure, through membership, an improved quality of life. Our children deserve it. They do not deserve we throw all this away. Only a vote for the PN on Saturday will ensure that the hard work has not been in vain and that we can make a success of Malta's next challenge without regrets.
Dr de Marco will be contesting the election on behalf of the Nationalist Party.