Repeaters…Repeaters…Repeaters…painfully, I sat in the comfort of my sitting room listening to Lawrence Gonzi’s speech on the Granaries, seven days prior to election day and of what I had gathered Reception was not all that enthusiastic, the young people sitting in the background of the Prime Minister gave me the impression that they were bored stiff with the contents of his over-the-top elongated speech, nothing new on what he was saying three week ago, just repeats.

What I found disturbing is the constant attacks on Alfred Sant. If the Labour leader is a spent force, as he is being depicted by the Prime Minister, then why bother even to mention his name?

The mass meeting brought forward the denial on payment for health services. Of course we pay for health services, and I speak from experience. I was married to a German national (passed away two months ago) who unfortunately her latter years were not all that rosy. She needed hospital stays and an awful amount of expensive medicines, on asking her hospital doctor whether these medicines can be obtained on the normally issued “yellow card” for hospital patients.

The request was flatly refused, adding that such medicines were not available at the hospital pharmacy. The doctors own words “they were too expensive to be issued on the National Health”. Of course this was lie. Because of the nature of this medicine falls under the drug act, I had to acquire the “White Card” and the prescription to be obtained from my family doctor (private)…but wait for it, the only place where I could buy this medicine was at the hospital pharmacy, odd to say the least. I am a pensioner, the princely monthly sum that I had to fork out for my wife`s medicine was precisely Lm51.35c (e119.60) a month. This is not a made-up story. I have papers and receipts.

It is about time that politicians come clean and in an honest way tell the electorate their hidden agendas. Is VAT going to be increased to make good for Health Care or not? It has happened before. Compare our rate that we managed to acquire the euro against the Lm. We pay one of the highest VAT rates in the EU, in the UK it is still 17.5 per cent and the Sterling is only worth e1.31, think about it!

Laurence Schembri

Gudja