The Labour Party will face whatever happens in Parliament tomorrow with serenity, as it has been doing consistently over the past months, leader Joseph Muscat said this morning.
Addressing a political activity in Zabbar, he said the PL was not in a hurry. It was ready to serve, knowing that it had the blessing, advantage and asset of a united team ready to face the responsibilities ahead and give the country the service it needed.
He said that there will be people who would try to provoke the Opposition tomorrow but said “we should not fall for any provocation”.
Dr Muscat said that, in the past months GonziPN moved from one crisis to another but preferred to lengthen the electoral process.
This was not a problem for the opposition but for the country.
Dr Gonzi, Dr Muscat said, had placed his consideration for his party before the country, he put Austin Gatt before the country’s stability and he was the only one to blame for the country’s situation.
The Labour leader said the Opposition could not vote in favour of the budget because it was a vote of confidence in the government and in the Prime Minister, which the Opposition did not have.
Pointing out that he had personal respect for the Prime Minister and would never attack him or anyone else militating within the PN personally, he said he entered politics to make his country the best in Europe and his lack of confidence in the Prime Minister was of a political nature.
The Prime Minister, Dr Muscat said, did not implement what he promised and he and the people who managed him were now trying to regain the people’s confidence.
He reiterated his promise that the Labour Party would not tax minimum wage earners, as this government would be doing. However, it would be retaining the backbone of the budget presented last week.
The taxing of minimum wage earners was a breach in the foundation of social justice and it was something Labour could not approve.
Dr Muscat said he was encouraged by the statements made by employer organisations and unions that the cost of living adjustment should be given on January 1, irrelevant of whether or not the budget was approved, because it depended on the incomes policy and not the budget.
He criticised the fear campaign which he said was underway and in which people were being threatened that they would lose their job if Labour was elected to government. These were all inventions, he said.
Civil servants, Dr Muscat said, were receiving an anonymous leaflet full of threats and lies. His message to civil servants, he said, was “you may not agree with us but you will be able to work with us”.
Dr Muscat accused the government of having misappropriated civil servants’ personal data.
“The Prime Minister has to come clean and admit that the PN has access to public sector workers’ private data,” Dr Muscat said, noting that publicly-available electoral register data did not include information about a person’s occupation.