It makes me sick to read of Lawrence Gonzi’s track record in government, as he depicts it. I am referring to what he said to the party faithful last Sunday. The government created 20,000 jobs, he claimed, government intervention had saved about 5,000 jobs in the financial crisis that hit the world, and it was the PN that introduced modern technology in the country.

So many jobs are precarious jobs, these days. They did not exist before. And so many women are having to work to make ends meet. And people work part-time to earn peanuts. Dr Gonzi does not mention the tens of thousands of his policies that have taken this country to the brink of poverty, while he and his ministers wallowed in the €500 a week increase they secretly gave themselves. And the other tens of thousands whose standard of living has nose dived because of the bills the government sends them.

He saved the jobs with our tax money, not through some brainwave policies. Elsewhere the GonziPN government squandered our tax money, as on the bridge that leads nowhere, and a parliament building we do not need. And they introduced modern technology because otherwise they would have fallen into the third world. There was nothing else for them to do.

I would like to mention just two things Dom Mintoff in government did without which the PN today would be on its knees, gasping for life. Firstly, Mr Mintoff established diplomatic relations with China, and we all know how the PN and its servile admirers guffawed and lambasted that, though today the PN boasts of the strong relations it has with China.

And it was Mr Mintoff who drew German investment to Malta, through his personal friendship with Chancellor Willy Brandt. German investment is a mainstay of our economy.

We had another PM who had a strong relationship with a German Chancellor. Eddie Fenech Adami was a strong admirer and friend of Helmut Kohl, who promised EFA early EU membership. But when the time came Mr Kohl ditched Dr Fenech Adami, because the then Czechoslovakia beckoned. ‘Early’ membership for Malta went on the backburner.

Everywhere you look, the PN made successes only with what the Labour Party bequeathed it. Labour, if elected, will be bequeathed a huge deficit and a national debt that is threatening to take the country to the bottom.

So much for PN policies.

■ J. Borg,

San Gwann.