Opposition leader Adrian Delia on Sunday insisted that Joseph Muscat “is lying” about the 17 Black affair and he knows that members of his administration are under criminal investigation. Yet he is doing nothing about it.
Speaking at the close of the Nationalist Party General Council, a fired up Dr Delia said he would lead the charge against government corruption while also working to deliver ‘a society that cares’ – the PN’s current political slogan.
Weighing in on the 17 Black revelations, Dr Delia said the Prime Minister would not take action against Minister Konrad Mizzi and chief of staff Keith Schembri because “his hands have been tied”.
The once-secret company 17 Black had been named in leaked e-mails as one of two companies that would pay $2 million to Mr Schembri and Dr Mizzi’s Panama companies.
A joint investigation by Reuters and Times of Malta earlier this month exposed how the Dubai company belonged to Electrogas power station director and business giant Yorgen Fenech.
Dr Delia said this posed a question: who is the real prime minister?
“Joseph Muscat swore an oath to be loyal to the constitution, but instead he is being loyal to those he seeks to protect,” Dr Delia said.
Read: 17 Black report is latest version in series of allegations, Muscat says
Corruption, he said, was not just a political catchphrase, it was a crime.
Society, he said, would not tolerate a thief stealing a handbag with a few bank notes and other valuables. And, so why should it tolerate the theft from everyone’s pocket that was happening as a result of corruption at the top levels of government?
A country not for sale.
Dr Delia accused the government of turning central pillars of the welfare state into lucrative money-making ventures.
Rather than focusing on providing better healthcare, the government had sold off national hospitals to a mystery company called Vitals. Who owned this company? How transparent was this deal? And, whose interest was this deal in?
The same he said was true of the government’s plans for education. While past PN administrations had created opportunities for students, the Labour government had instead seen this sector as a business opportunity – a reference to the American University of Malta project that has been shrouded in controversy.
On roads and the government’s pledge to deliver first class infrastructure, it appeared as though the plan was to simply widen roads, splash on tarmac and invite more cars to jam at the major bottlenecks.
A soulless state
Dr Delia’s speech revolved largely around what he described as the negative consequences of the government’s plan for Malta.
Referring to the government’s economic vision to import labour Dr Delia said this was wreaking havoc on Maltese society. Housing prices were spiralling out of control, and the job market was becoming over-saturated.
The type of jobs being created, he said, were not value adding, but simply about increasing the island’s overall output. This was not creating room for growth.
And all the while, the island’s infrastructure of roads, healthcare, public education was crumbling under the pressure of tens of thousands more living on the island.
Dr Muscat’s metropolitan dream, was turning out to be more of a slum dog’s nightmare. Localities like St Paul’s Bay were becoming “no-go areas”, and there seemed to be no plan whatsoever for national security.
In conclusion, Dr Delia said his vision of a “society that cares” was in many ways a departure from the direction taken by the current administration, it would focus on those who he said had been forgotten, and would see a return to “the values that make us all Maltese”.