Malta Labour Party leader Alfred Sant said yesterday that next Sunday’s mass meeting in Hamrun would echo the call for a new beginning for the country based on the principles of employment generation, social protection and dignity that had emerged from the Party’s recent annual general conference. These tenets, he added, would be reinforced in the local council election campaigns now underway.
Dr Sant was seen in full local council election swing as he toured the Rabat Sunday market yesterday morning. Flanked by MLP deputy leader Michael Falzon, MLP president Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi, party general secretary Jason Micallef and Rabat mayor Frank Fabri, Dr Sant commended the work carried out by Rabat local council over the last two or three years.
Pushing for another Labour majority for Rabat, he urged the supporters present to choose Labour once again, come the 11 March local council elections. On Saturday, Malta’s political parties announced the candidates they are to field in next month’s elections. Rabat’s Labour candidates were on hand as Dr Sant stopped frequently to chat freely with market traders and shoppers, taking their questions on subjects ranging from the economy to voter registration for the upcoming local council run off.
Dr Sant referred to a number of embellishment projects carried out by the Rabat council such as the installation of new benches and the upgrading of parks, street lighting and roads in the town. He singled out Rabat as an area where a Labour administration has made a visible difference and assured well-wishers that Labour would continue to do its utmost to improve the area’s roads and sports and community facilities.
The work carried out by Rabat council, said Dr Sant, was very much in line with Labour’s views on the issues of the environment and tourism. A number of issues in these areas were discussed at length at the MLP’s recent annual general conference and Dr Sant expressed the hope that these would be incorporated in the Labour Party’s next electoral manifesto. He added that the Labour party had outstanding credentials from work carried out in tourism and the environment when it was last in power between 1996 and 1998.
On the environment, Dr Sant reiterated his contention that within six months of a new Labour administration, the Malta Environment and Planning Authority’s project approval processes would be reformed in order to stipulate set time frames within which Mepa is to reach its decisions.
Dr Sant also took the opportunity to restate the general conference’s message that “jungle law” must be done away with and that a new Labour government would champion the causes of enhancing the welfare state and its associated social protections.
Labour’s plans for tourism, which were approved at the general conference, include the institution of a public-private task force to look into the industry’s taxation issues. A new Labour government, according to Dr Sant, would work on proposals to reduce taxation levels imposed on this sensitive sector.
Focusing more specifically on his immediate environs, Dr Sant stressed the importance of tourist attractions such as St Paul’s and St Agatha’s Catacombs as holding further potential still to be developed. He also praised Rabat council’s initiative for publishing a tourist map of Rabat that identified the area’s major and most interesting tourist attractions.
Following his walk through the market, Dr Sant introduced Labour’s seven council candidates for Rabat – Francis Chircop, Dolores Coleiro, Alexander Craus, Francis Fabri, Paul Grech, Carmel Vassallo and Mary Edwige Xuereb, and the MLP’s candidate for Mdina, Frederick Azzopardi, who will be Labour’s first council candidate for the locality – to resounding applause at Rabat Labour club.