Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said today he is ready to meet women currently holding a protest outside the Auberge de Castille in Valletta.
The women are calling for the dismissal of the Attorney General and the Commissioner of Police in the wake of the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder. They complained yesterday that Dr Muscat is ignoring them.
Speaking in Rabat this morning, Dr Muscat said the women protesting outside his office never asked to meet him, and he was prepared to meet them if they wished.
(In a statement later the women said they made the request on Thursday, but they welcomed the prime minister's declaration.)
Dr Muscat insisted that there was no reason for the Attorney General to be dismissed.
Furthermore, his dismissal, which would require a two-thirds majority in parliament, would be wrong because such a dismissal could only be made on the basis of proven inability to carry out his duties, something which was not the case.
In his speech Dr Muscat also defended his decision to go to Dubai last week (to address a conference on the selling of Maltese passports).
He said it was his duty to work for the country and attract investment to Malta and within a few weeks the government would be pleased to announce further significant investment to Malta.
Dr Muscat said all those trying to make political mileage out of the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia would see it blow up in their face.
“The public are silently judging all of us, and I am sure more than ever that they are behind this administration.
“But, we also have to respect those who genuinely have a different opinion, who have concerns about the country. As for those who are simply trying to make political mileage out of this, I am certain that it will blow up in their face in the most spectacular way possible,” he said.
Framing his speech as one meant to convey “hope for the future”, Dr Muscat said a national debate on Constitutional reform was imminent.
This, he said, was essential “not because of what just happened”, but Ms Caruana Galizia’s brutal murder had made it all the more important to discuss the country’s institutions.
“Looking back, if something disappoints me, it is that the debate on Constitutional reform has not yet begun,” he said, adding that he hoped to hear the Opposition’s proposals on the matter soon.
He told listeners who crowded the club and the street outside about government plans to improve quality of life for those with disability, and how the future economic problem would not be job creation, but how to fill all the jobs being created.
“However, while we are doing all of this we will not shut our eyes to what has just happened in our country. I did not go and hide away, I faced the criticism, but I will not play hypocritical games either,” he said.
Dr Muscat said that while he was offering a shoulder for the country to lean on, “others” were falling into the same mistake they had done during the election campaign.
“Families today will sit together and eat lunch, tomorrow, they will go to work, people will meet in the streets, and they will know that the picture some are painting of our country is untrue,” he said, adding that those who painted the “negative picture” were “out of sync” with Maltese society.
The government, he said, respected those who protested, but it also respected those who voted in the recent general election.
Dr Muscat then weighed in on criticism of the country’s rule of law.
He referred to a recent “hidden” news report which he said was about a drug trafficker let off after the police grossly mishandled the case.
“I read this and wondered how have I not heard more about this? And then I realised it was because this had all happened under a previous government, a previous police commissioner, a previous Attorney General,” he said, adding that this showed a lack of credibility from many who were today criticising the rule of law in Malta.