Nationalist leader Adrian Delia on Sunday urged people to 'come walk with us' as he slammed the government for letting a situation develop where some people felt unsafe in the streets.
"Come walk with us instead," he appealed.
He said the government wanted to bring thousands of foreign workers to Malta but had not planned for the influx. It was not saying what it planned to do, yet everyone expected solutions from him.
"Look at the papers today- they are full of interviews and articles about me," he said.
"They keep asking me what my proposals are. Well, let Labour leave, and I will tell you what my proposals are," he said, to applause and a standing ovation.
The Opposition leader was speaking on the granaries as part of the PN's week-long Independence activities.
In his address he attempted to clarify his arguments regarding migrants, after several NGOs criticised him for his “anti-migrant” comments, calling them "abhorrent".
"I was simply asking questions," Dr Delia insisted.
He said that while he understood industry's needs for foreign workers, the government needed to plan so that Malta attracted the sort of foreign workers who helped create added-value rather than workers who risked taking over other people's jobs.
At this rate, within a few years, more than half the working population would be foreign. How would this work? What would their conditions be, in what sectors would they work, what taxes would they pay, where would they live?" he asked.
The economy, he stressed, needed to be based on production, not population.
In other parts of his address Dr Delia criticised the government for failing to protect the environment and said the environment needed to be protected and become an economic sector in itself.
He said the government had no plan to address traffic congestion and was spending millions on the roads which but this would not solve this issue.
He hit out at the way decisions were taken according to personal, rather than national interests. “We cannot allow a situation where personal interests are involved in every government decision,” he said.
He also touched on the Nationalist Party’s financial situation, saying that he had a 10-year-plan to address the debt the party accumulated over time.
The party had had a record of new paid-up members this year, Dr Delia said. “We have not seen this many people becoming paid-up members in 13 years,” he added, thanking PN's political coordinator Jean Pierre Debono.
However, new EU-wide General Data Protection Regulation rules (GDPR) rules meant a lot of people were not receiving messages informing them of PN fundraising campaigns, Dr Delia complained.
GDPR rules that came to force earlier this year meant people had to consent to receive messages from the party.
"I am appealing for more people to allow us to communicate with them," he said.
He also insisted that Independence day should be Malta's national day- a call which was also made by former foreign minister Tonio Borg. Dr Borg also stressed that the only way how the government could be democratically removed was for people to rally around the Nationalist Party.