In its penultimate mass meeting of the electoral campaign, the Nationalist Party stormed Victoria yesterday evening as thousands of the PN faithful from Gozo and Malta alike thronged the Gozitan capital’s main street.

Backed by Deputy Prime Minister Tonio Borg and the PN’s candidate offering for Gozo, Prime Minister and Nationalist Party leader Lawrence Gonzi faced a zealous crowd gathered for the only PN mass meeting of the campaign in Gozo, just four days before the general election.

“We have come to Gozo,” Dr Gonzi told them, “to spread the message that the moment has arrived.

“We came to Gozo tonight for the last push, the last push to Saturday when the Maltese and Gozitan people take the country’s destiny into their own hands.”

Just as the people took the decision into their own hands five years ago in the EU referendum, Dr Gonzi said, the choice is as clear now as it was then.

Dr Gonzi appealed to those considering not voting and undecided voters to “place the national interest and the interests of your families, your children and your parents first and foremost”.

“Reflect well, the future of the country is in your hands on 8 March,” he urged an enthusiastic crowd. “Place your faith in the Nationalist Party, which places its faith in you. Every day and every vote is precious in these last few days – and there is an important choice to be made.”

The facts, he said, speak for themselves. Every time the PN has been in power, the country has grown and moved ahead in its quality of life, while every time it has been under a Labour administration it has fallen behind.

The PN, Dr Gonzi said, has cultivated the highest numbers of gainfully employed on the books, the lowest numbers of people registering for work, the largest numbers of university students, record investment levels and tourism results.

The PN not only believes in the country but believes specifically in the island of Gozo, Dr Gonzi said, laying out a long list of what the government has done for Gozo over the last for years, amongst which were the newly-opened Mgarr ferry terminal, an industrial estate, a desalination plant, new Gozo ferries, the Rabat sports complex and schools – with the first stone having been laid for a new school in Rabat.

The truth, he said, is that Gozo has succeeded under the PN, which has always placed Gozo at the centre of the government’s attention.

Additionally all sections of society, he said, have benefited at one point or another from the Nationalist government’s policies and vision.

Ten years ago Malta had the MLP in government, Dr Gonzi remarked to a chorus of boos from the crowd, and Gozo had deteriorated under its administration, which ignored had Gozo and the entire country.

Regardless of political beliefs, he said, the PN aimed to see the entire Maltese and Gozitan population move forward and not be left behind.

The MLP, he said, fosters worries and stagnation, uncertainty and instability. The MLP, he added, has a lack of faith in the Maltese and Gozitan people, does not believe in their capability and bears a national inferiority complex.

This, Dr Gonzi said, was the main difference between the parties.

Interrupted by chanting at one point, Dr Gonzi told the crowd, “I am tempted to sing with you, but I won’t,” adding that his talents lie elsewhere.

The MLP, he said, was prone to making mistakes at historic moments. SmartCity, which he said would be placing both Malta and Gozo on the world map, had been put down to a mere exercise in property speculation by the MLP. If it had been the MLP in government, he said, SmartCity would not have happened, adding, “It is a good thing the PN was in government”.

Turning to the issue of euro adoption, Dr Gonzi said, “We took the ambitious and tough decision to be one of the first new EU member states to adopt the euro, and succeeded.” The PN, he said, sets ambitious goals, and succeeds.

The MLP, he said, views Malta as nothing more than a minnow, and does not believe in the country’s capabilities. The euro, Dr Gonzi said, was as important to Malta as its daily bread – and the country was already making a success of it.

The PN, Dr Gonzi said, has placed Malta on the road to competitiveness, to certainty. The MLP, meanwhile, wanted to devalue the Maltese lira, and in the process reach into each and every pocket and remove 10 per cent of wages and savings.

The MLP, he remarked, has given one piece of bad advice after another.

“Whoever is the prime minister on Monday will have e855 million for the Maltese Islands, and 10 per cent of that will be explicitly for Gozo,” Dr Gonzi said.

Counting the Lm150 million received from the EU between 2004 and now, he observed Malta will have used no less than e1.26 billion in EU funding for the betterment of the Maltese and Gozitan people’s quality of life by 2014.

The PN government, he said, is a government that looks after all working conditions, and will come down hard on employers found exploiting their employees.

On the possibility of introducing charges for health services, Dr Gonzi pledged once again, “As long as I am the prime minister of this country, there will never be any charges for health services.”

The MLP, he said, was playing dangerous games and also insulting all and sundry with the use of derogatory adjectives to attack him personally, youths and their parents.

The PN’s credo, Dr Gonzi said, is that all of Malta and Gozo is one family that can grow together, without distinction of DNA or anything else.