Prime Minister and Nationalist Party leader Lawrence Gonzi received a rousing welcome yesterday morning in Cospicua, at the start of a day of political campaigning that was to see him speak first at the Labour stronghold and later in the afternoon address a mass meeting in the PN heartland of Sliema.
Addressing a boisterous crowd yesterday morning, Dr Gonzi observed how, in 15 days, the day after the 8 March election, “Someone will be celebrating”. The comment drew a round of applause and cheers from the audience.
“But,” he added, “if on 8 March things go badly, the whole country will be repeating five whole years – not only children who will be repeating a year of school through the Malta Labour Party’s reception class proposal.
“Will we win for sure?” Dr Gonzi asked the crowd, adding the caveat that, “Nothing is for certain and we will need to work up to the last day of the campaign to explain our proposals and convince people of our points of view.”
He added the PN’s goal, unlike the MLP’s 8 March goal, is for the five years after election day. This, he said, was just one of the major differences distinguishing the two larger political parties.
These differences, he added, were no clearer than when it came to how each party views Malta’s youngsters and teens.
“People here in the second district can see the huge difference the PN has made here in the heart of Cospicua – from the nearby new sports complex to the new garden to the new school,” Dr Gonzi remarked.
He added the PN was also looking into establishing cruise liner operations at Senglea, “if the General Workers’ Union lets us”, Dr Gonzi remarked in reference to a recent verbal spat between the government and the union.
“We want to save the shipyards and invest more in this area of the country,” Dr Gonzi stressed, “and in the process attract more tourists, jobs and increased economic activity to the Cottonera area”.
Over the last legislature, Dr Gonzi noted, the MLP had barely referred to education, until, at last summer’s Indifest he himself had begun unveiling new plans for the educational sphere.
Only then, three and a half years into the legislature, Dr Gonzi said, had the MLP begun addressing the issue. The MLP had now come up with the reception class proposal, which he described as a “big mistake” that had been sealed in the party’s electoral manifesto.
“Experiments and games with our children, this is what the people at the MLP are proposing,” Dr Gonzi remarked.
“Over the last days, instead of having the moral courage to admit they have made a mistake, the MLP is persisting with the proposal, trying to justify it by quoting Lord Adonis,” he said.
The MLP, he added, was in the habit of quoting Lord Andrew Adonis, the UK’s parliamentary under secretary of state for schools and learners, of touting the reception class scheme. But, Dr Gonzi observed, the British educational system was exactly the same as Malta’s current system.
In the UK, he said, children moved up through a year of nursery to a year of reception class, and then on to the primary level. Malta, meanwhile, had kinder one, and kinder two, followed by the primary level. Labour’s proposal, he said, would see Maltese children having an extra year in between kinder two and primary.
Another outright lie being propagated by the MLP, Dr Gonzi said, was that the PN was aiming to close down junior lyceums. The same, he said, went for the MLP’s proposal for trade schools, which is what MCAST already is, and where Lm50 million is being invested in a new campus.