Caretaker Prime Minister Joseph Muscat continued to take the people for a ride right till the end of his tenure, with a speech that was riddled with surreal declarations that go against the realities the people are facing, the Nationalist Party said in a statement.

He boasted about his record in education, when under his leadership Malta has the second highest rate of early school leavers. He failed to stick to his promise of building schools.

Muscat said that the gap between the rich and the poor had diminished but in reality the wealth generated by the country was not distributed equally, and instead it was Muscat and the people around him who benefited the most, the PN said.

Muscat spoke about employment, but he did not say that the jobs generated were of a low-income level that led to cheap labour, with foreigners employed to work in difficult conditions.

Malta had the worst quality of air in Europe, something Muscat failed to mention. Neither did he speak about the environmental disasters his government created, the PN said.

Most of all, he did not speak about the corruption that characterised his tenure and choked the country’s institutions. When he said that he had paid the highest price he failed to say that it was Daphne Caruana Galizia who paid with her life for doing her duty as a journalist, the PN said.