Exactly six months from today, Malta will be voting the European Parliament elections and the local council elections.
This approaching date added a certain urgency to the proceedings at the conclusion of the PN General Council which came to an end this morning, bringing to a conclusion meetings which were held over a whole week.
Although the speakers did not include people recognised to be rebels in the party, people like Simon Busuttil and Mario de Marco were in the audience and were even saluted by the speakers. A certain amount of speakers were young who have been following the special course for leaders that the party is fostering.
PN leader Adrian Delia ended the proceedings with a speech lasting around an hour which was delivered in a calm and reflective manner and which focused, in its initial stages at showing up Prime Minister Muscat as a 'liar'.
The party is concentrating on listening to people, Dr Delia began, for it considers each person not as a collection of eight cells as Minister Chris Fearne famously described it, but as an individual with rights and duties.
While wages grew by only 1.5%, people like Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri grew richer and richer from the very first moment of the PL administration.
The recent World Bank ratings on ease of doing business has ranked Malta in the 84th place while in PN times it only took 48 hours to open up a company and two weeks to open a bank account.
4500 want government housing. 24 hours after the government taking oath on 14 March 2013, three companies were opened in Panama to receive €150,000 a month or €35,000 a week when people in Malta got an increase of just €2.33 a week.
Joseph Muscat is with his back to the wall - when asked by the media about 17 Black, he referred to an inquiry which had been set in motion by Simon Busuttil and argued he wanted to follow the rule of law. Is Joseph Muscat the prime minister or is it Keith Schembri?
When he (Adrian Delia) asked questions on this same subject in Parliament, the prime minister made fun of him and gave no real reply in return.
Mr Schembri had said he would resign if caught in a corruption case but he has not resigned so far.
The same thing happened in the health sector where Vitals was handed a €2000 million sum to be spent on three hospitals and it was handed over to a company nobody had heard of. This is why PN insists the three hospitals must come back to the people of Malta.
The government has also handed land at Zonqor to an unknown institution which has not succeeded in attracting students.
As regards roads, the government is spending €700 million not to create new roads or new mass transportation systems but to do up existing roads and resurface them. No input was allowed by the local councils and 1,000 new cars come in every month.
An elderly couple told him about their plight - with a pension of €1000 a month, they are being forced to go and live in a garage. There are 3,200 in a list for social housing but Prime Minister Muscat said there will always be people who want government housing.
This is a government that seeks growth by seeing the population grow. Last week the Opposition found out that some months ago the government revalued the population of Malta which is now estimated at 460,000, not 440,000 as previously thought.
That is a population density of 1500 per sq km, while there are only 16 persons in the same area in Finland.
The population is growing by 15,000 a year - our young people will not find places to rent, let alone the pressure on polyclinics etc. The MEA has also complained about the consequences of such increases in population. Every legislature, Malta's population will increase by 60,000.
On 19 November and afterwards, women will be working for free - that is the gender wage gap between women and men - 40 days each year.
And as regards mental health, WHO estimates that 25% of the world's population suffers from mental health problems. There is only one psychiatrist to cope with all children with mental health issues and government figures themselves say that people face an eight-month delay for a medical appointment.
As regards security, he himself had gone to the Marsa police station and found it closed. The police have to work with outdated means and little money. If something happens at Dingli, it is the policemen at Marsa who have to go. And Chris Said has found out that no less than 12 of the 16 police stations in Gozo are closed during the day.
Foreigners have complained to him they are being charged more for water and electricity than the Maltese and the Maltese themselves have been complaining to the party they are consistently being charged more by ARMS.
People are telling the party they want to work and help Malta.
The government has even botched the recycling of waste when it would have been easy for a small country with the dimensions of Malta to turn waste into energy.
The party is proving it is in favour of youth and will also show it is in favour of SMEs who want quicker access to banks and a less rigid tax structure.
Above all, the party will always be against corruption wherever it may be and in favour of principles of good governance everywhere.
Among the speakers in the first part of the session there were Peter Agius, Mike Briguglio, Dione Borg, David Casa, Roberta Metsola, JP Debono, Frank Psaila and Francis Zammit Dimech while party secretary Clyde Puli brought the conference to an end.
Photos: Michael Camilleri