After Nationalist Party exponents, particularly David Casa, Roberta Metsola, Francis Zammit Dimech, Simon Busuttil, Jason Azzopardi and Adrian Delia, had vented their wrath on three of Malta’s main pillars of our democracy and the rule of law - the judiciary, the police and the Attorney General’s office - it was now the turn of an attack on the international credit rating agencies.

The sole reason behind the PN’s incredible attack is because these rating agencies have again issued a very favourable report about Malta.

They unashamedly alleged that these international credit-rating agencies are issuing such favourable reports because “the government is paying them”. How utterly ridiculous!

Do they then believe that any government or entity which does not get a favourable rating is due to the fact that the said government or entity would not have paid the rating-agencies? Any entity or government who asks a credit-rating agency to issue a rating about its business or economy etc, would have to pay the credit-rating agency. 

That doesn’t have any effect on the credit-rating report at all. Otherwise, if what the PN exponents are saying were true, one could then imagine the Venezuelan government asking and paying these rating-agencies and thus getting favourable reports about the Venezuelan economy. 

On February 20, Eurostat published its latest survey. It shows that 87 per cent of the Maltese people said that the current situation in Malta is either “very good” or “rather good”. This is the highest positive opinion about one’s own country among all 28 member states, when the EU average is 50 per cent. Besides this, 96 per cent stated that they “are very satisfied or fairly satisfied with the life they lead” in our country.

Will the PN exponents now say that those interviewed by Eurostat, and even Eurostat itself, were paid by the government, for such a favourable report?