The results of the local council elections have convinced one and all that the Nationalist Party can win the next election, Opposition Leader Simon Busuttil said today.

Speaking in St Paul’s Bay, Dr Busuttil said he was always convinced that the PN will be able to give a strong challenge to the Labour Party. But after the general election and MEP election results, many people were sceptical that the PN can make it. Now that the local election results are out, and the PN has halved the distance it had with Labour compared to 2012, there is an overall conviction that the next election is not a foregone conclusion.

There is a new feeling out there that the PN is back in business, he told his supporters. “Those who believed that we stood no chance of winning the next election have now changed their mind,” he said.

The PN had been losing votes for many years, but the last local election results have shown that there has been a turnaround. “We have not arrived yet. The road is still long and arduous. But if we have managed to walk half-way we can manage to do it all,” he said.

What struck people in the past few months was the PN’s honesty. “Our slogan was that we can make a difference and, even in opposition, we are making a difference,” he said.

Dr Busuttil said that he expected all Nationalist local councils to work in unity. All promises made must be fulfilled and councillors must remain close to the people.

This is also true on a national level, he added. The PN is making a difference from the opposition benches too, as it did when it forced the government to lower the price of fuel. “We are full of ideas and we will not be keeping them secret,” he said.

The Labour Party had promised a tough fight against precarious work when it was in opposition, but matters in the last two years had deteriorated, Dr Busuttil said, mentioning care-work, security and cleaning as the main sectors where workers were being abused.

It had also promised a magic wand to resolve the issue of overcrowding in hospital, but two years down the line the situation has become worse. It is good that a foreign university will be investing in Malta, but the day-to-day problems in the running of the hospital must also be addressed.

Dr Busuttil also admonished Prime Minister Joseph Muscat for his style of doing politics. Dr Muscat promised a new way, but he is doing the opposite of what he preached.

Dr Busuttil said that it was only thanks to newspapers that we know that Dr Muscat is going to Azerbaijan for his second visit in four months. When Dr Muscat went there a few months ago, he did not tell us and now the same thing has happened. Why is Dr Muscat so keen to visit one of the most corrupt countries in the world? Who has he taken with him and why did he try to keep the visit a secret? Dr Busuttil asked.

He also questioned why the Opposition was not invited for the launch of the interconnector project, which had been started by the previous government.

Dr Busuttil said that Labour had embarked on a personal campaign against him “which will only serve to strengthen my resolve”. But this is not the right way of doing politics. When Labour was in Opposition, it used the illegal migration phenomenon to try to win votes. “This is contrary to what I did when we discussed the issue in Parliament on Friday, where I offered consensus with the government so long as it was doing the right thing”.

In the earlier part of his speech, Dr Busuttil expressed his solidarity with the people of Nepal following the earthquake which killed more than 1,900 people.