Birzebbuga's Pretty Bay was awash with red and confetti yesterday evening as Malta Labour Party (MLP) leader Alfred Sant took the stage before a cheering crowd to chants of 'Viva Labour, Viva Labour'.

Playfully joining in the chant, Dr Sant declared Labour would be ready for the upcoming election – whenever it might be called.

Malta appeared to be in full electoral campaign swing yesterday evening, with the Nationalist Party (PN) also holding its traditional Independence celebrations at the Granaries in Floriana. Yesterday's MassFest was the first time the MLP held a parallel mass meeting on the eve of the holiday.

And the tone of yesterday's speeches given by the MLP leadership reflected the fact that the party's campaigning was clearly being turned up a notch.

Dr Sant declared that given the MLP's platform of work, protection and dignity, the Maltese and Gozitan people were ready for the party to catalyse a new change in the country after 20 years of stagnation under the Nationalist Party.

"People want a change and we are ready to give them the change they are longing for," Dr Sant proclaimed to roars of approval.

The people were tired of the government of the day, in which, he said, incompetence had become the rule of the day and seriousness the exception.

Additionally, Labour had a clear, coherent vision for the country's future, while the government led by Lawrence Gonzi was incapable of giving the country any sense of direction.

Throughout his politically charged discourse – during which he left no stone unturned in referring to recent allegations of corruption – Dr Sant pronounced Dr Gonzi's name repeatedly in a drawn-out, tauntingly disdainful fashion – to boos of approval from the crowd assembled on the sandy beach.

In one institution, corporation and authority after another, Dr Sant said, decisions were being taken to the benefit of a few and to the detriment of the many.

In addition to corruption, the country’s administration was also riddled with incompetence and inefficiency, Dr Sant said. Such was the state of affairs, he added after listing out a raft of public projects, that several capital projects undertaken over recent years had drastically overrun their original cost estimates by Lm191 million.

The Cabinet, he added, was populated by tired, stagnant people who were bereft of ideas, which was why the people were crying out for a change Labour was proposing.

Also speaking yesterday, MLP deputy leader Michael Falzon described the MLP as a party with vision, without fear and sincere in its convictions.

The MLP’s cause, he said, was also the Maltese people’s cause. This, he added, boiled down to a change in the running of the country, in the ways things are done, in the way in which the people are treated – and a change from an arrogant government to a government of the people, for the people.

Dr Falzon appealed to undecided voters to throw their lot with the MLP if they too wanted such a change in the country.

Fellow deputy opposition leader Charles Mangion meanwhile heralded the fact that the families assembled yesterday evening and others throughout the country also wanted such a change – not just because they were tired of the country’s current leadership but rather because they knew the MLP was able to take the country forward, to offer its citizens that the people were looking to Labour because it had a tangible plan for all sectors of society and the economy.

The Nationalist Party, he said, was aiming to develop Malta into a ‘centre of excellence’ within seven years, but over the last 20 years it had only excelled in indebting Maltese families, corruption, and never-ending projects.

After the privatisation of Maltacom and other entities, Dr Mangion said, the government of the day had the face to tell the country’s families it could not help them with the fuel surcharge.

A future MLP government, he reiterated, would half the surcharge on electricity and water.

Turning to health care, Dr Mangion displayed documents evidencing that despite the government’s promises to the contrary, medicine prices were still rising.

Labour, he added, would curtail the situation, and also guarantee that health care remained free.

Political accountability, he said, was the right of the people and Labour would deliver, and take responsibility for all that it did.