■ Annaliza Borg

Opposition Leader Joseph Muscat yesterday afternoon urged Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi to convene Parliament on Monday and request a vote of confidence in the government, following yesterday’s Cabinet reshuffle and the appointment of new ministers.

His appeal became stronger as he learnt that PN backbencher Franco Debono had called for the Prime Minister’s resignation.

Parliament is currently in recess and is scheduled to be convened again on Wednesday 18 January.

Addressing journalists at the Labour Party Headquarters, in Ħamrun, Dr Muscat said:

“Today’s decisions were clearly ones of convenience not conviction, and were taken because he was forced and not because he believes in them”.

A month ago Dr Gonzi had denied plans for a Cabinet reshuffle but this has now happened and nothing new was offered to the country, Dr Muscat felt.

“The people chosen belong to the same clique,” he said.

Moreover, it had taken three years for the Prime Minister to take the Opposition’s advice and appoint a Minister for Tourism, split the Justice and Home Affairs Ministry and refuse the €500 weekly increase to Cabinet members, which till a short while ago, was being defended.

Dr Muscat insisted the latter decision only came after he had announced that if he is elected to government, one of his first decisions will be to remove the €500 increase. Families have long been feeling the burden, he emphasised.

“The Prime Minister had treated people as a door mat and nothing else,” he continued. “This shows that the PL is leading and Prime Minister Gonzi is following”.

So far, Cabinet members have taken €1 million between them in three-and-a-half years, he said, while urging the government to give this money back. Dr Muscat believes the government has no other way out if it wants to win some credit.

“But Dr Gonzi believes the €500 increase is rightfully his and the Cabinet will get the money back if it is re-elected in government.”

This was only leading to “great instability”. “We have seen nothing else but a pantomime over the past days and all this was unsettling the economy.”

He strongly believed that Dr Gonzi should not wait two weeks for Parliament to reconvene but should request it to meet much sooner to cut speculation and confirm whether his government is capable of leading the country for another year, or not.

“This is what seriousness calls,” Dr Muscat said.

Meanwhile, he also pointed out that the government had not referred to its failure to meet the financial goals it had set itself in the budget of a few weeks ago. The European Commission is currently discussing Malta’s income and expenditure, he noted, and at this time, the country needs a stable government that takes decisions carefully.

He concluded by saying the Opposition was in no way creating instability because stability was the only thing it was interested in.

In reply to The Malta Independent’s question whether reversing the decision of the €500 weekly increase was the government’s way of giving something to the people at a difficult time, and a year prior to a general election, Dr Muscat replied:

“He has not given anything to the people but only taken from it. There has meanwhile not been a strategic change the country needs, no new talent and simply musical chairs. Those who had something removed, received something else,” he said.