MLP leadership contender Evarist Bartolo said the Nationalist government was trying to distract people’s attention by references to the MLP leadership campaign, as if nothing else was happening in the country, but it would be better for it to concentrate on the serious problems the country faced, and which would affect thousands of families.

For one, he said, the government should see what it needed to do about the ST Microelectronics factory, which employed 2,200 people and was seriously considering a move to another country.

It was going to do that in 1996 but Labour in government took the necessary steps to make it possible for it to stay here, Mr Bartolo said.

He was addressing party delegates from the north of Malta at a social activity.

The government, Mr Bartolo added, had better consider what it could do to help the thousands of families being hit by the rising prices of fuel oil and food. There were many families which could not deal with more price rises and higher bills because in the EU Maltese families were the least to get government assistance, with the government dedicating just a little over one euro for every 100 euros of the national wealth.

The government could not claim it was not aware of the international economic situation and the rising prices of fuel oil and food, because it had referred to them in its party manifesto. It had also promised tax cuts and an improvement in social services but now it was changing its tone.

Mr Bartolo said they would be checking on the 353 electoral promises the government had made. To honour them all would mean honouring six of them each month.

So far it had not only not implemented 12 of them in the past two months, but was going back on them. Promise 159, on energy efficient domestic appliance subsidies had gone with the wind, and so had promise 258, that government boards would be appointed after calls for applications.

Mr Bartolo said if the government continued acting as if the opposition did not exist, it was their duty to bring this to the government’s attention.

The opposition had almost half the country behind it and if they united and worked well in parliament and outside, the government would not last five years.