The PL and the PN have a very different vision for the country, with the former giving more opportunities for new families to be formed and the latter wanting to take these opportunities away.
PM Joseph Muscat was speaking in Senglea, shortly after Deputy Prime Minister and Health Minister Chris Fearne had announced that nine women are pregnant after making use of the new IVF law.
The law, which proved to be very controversial, introduced embryo freezing.
“It is not true, as the Opposition wants you to believe, that we are killing people. This is a progressive law that gives more opportunities for new families to form. On the other side there is someone saying that he would remove this law,” Muscat said, referring to Adrian Delia’s pledge to repeal the law.
“This is a very clear statement of intent – there is a clear difference on how the PL and PN see the future of this country. This is a matter of principle – there are those who believe in science and progress and those who want things to remain the same. There are those who believe in personal freedom and those who think that they can tell a woman what she can do or not do.”
Turning to the National Audit Office report on the Electrogas power station, the PM said the government was proud of the conclusions.
This was the biggest infrastructural project the country has seen so far, the PM said, adding that bigger projects were in the pipeline. Referring to road infrastructure projects like the one ongoing at Marsa, Muscat said the country was changing right in front of people’s eyes. “If we have more cars we have to take up more land to widen our roads. But we also have to consider other things, such as public transport and cycling lanes.” He said the country’s infrastructure would be rebuilt from the bottom up and there will be bigger projects in the pipeline.
The NAO report had pointed out that all parties had cooperated and provided the requested information. “It might look like a simple thing but it is not. And it was not always the case in the past.”
He said Delia had rushed to react to the NAO report and got it wrong. The Opposition Leader’s calculations were off by millions, he said. “The Opposition has not yet understood the basic concept of how energy policy works.”
It failed to note that the cost of the interconnector was not included in the NAO’s workings. The PN had also incorrectly stated that the country had been “robbed” of €200 when the government had not even paid that much to Electrogas. It also failed to observe that interconnector prices vary during different times of the day and that the EU requires every country to have an energy back-up.
Furthermore, recent EU data showed that Malta has among the cheapest energy prices.
Muscat also referred to a report published by Times of Malta that claimed that a London-based prostitution racket and the alleged involvement of Adrian Delia were part of an ongoing money-laundering investigation by the police.
Muscat said just this week Delia was asking whether a company or a person were under investigation in the 17 Black inquiry. “I could ask about the Fekkruna deal: who is under investigation there; a person or a company? I could ask the same about these new reports; are the police investigating Delia or a London shop?”
“I am not in a position to say if this report is true or not because I am not privy to information from the investigation. I could turn everything he said about us back onto Delia, but this is where the difference between men and boys emerges. I will wait for the outcome of any investigation and take it from there,” Muscat said.
Turning to the MEP elections next year, Muscat said these will not be easy elections. “We always begin from the same starting point. We do not have some divine right, some entitlement to win elections.”
DPM Chris Fearne
Earlier, Deputy Prime Minister Chris Fearne said Delia had claimed that there are 63,000 people who have been on a waiting list to get an outpatients appointment for over eight months. What Delia failed to say was that the data was three years old and there are now 11,000 people on that list, Fearne said. The DPM said the government was still not happy with that number and would keep working to reduce the number.
PN statement
In a statement, the PN said it was surreal how Joseph Muscat was admitting that we are being robbed €100m a year after he admitted that we are being robbed €200m every two years.
Like Muscat, Konrad Mizzi was also boasting about the NAO report, when this was actually a damning indictment. Like Muscat, Mizzi is living in a parallel world, the PN said.
The PM, who insists on protecting Mizzi and Schembri, has guaranteed that the country will keep being robbed, just like in the case of the three hospitals, the American university, the fuel hedging agreement and the gas purchase agreement.
If Joseph Muscat truly cares about the country’s reputation he should immediately sack Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri. Muscat has his back to the wall and no one believes him, the PN said.