Opposition Leader Simon Busuttil today challenged Prime Minister Joseph Muscat to consult with the public on the subject of embryo freezing before pushing ahead with his "personal beliefs."

Speaking on RTK this afternoon, Dr Busuttil said the PN had enacted a “good” law in 2013, bringing about regulation to the sector. “The government now wants to change this law, despite the fact that the legislation has given very good results. The Prime Minister should explain why he wants to change the law. He should consult the public.”

Dr Busuttil told The Malta Independent today that he could not possibly give his reaction to the proposed changes before the Prime Minister made himself clear on the subject.

Asked about the decisions he took when reshuffling the party and accepting the resignation of Giovanna Debono, Dr Busuttil said he was guided by honest politics and ethics.The government, on the other hand, had embraced institutionalised corruption. Unlike the government, he said, he always used the same yardstick when faced with difficult decisions.

Deciding that someone should stay in the party was just as difficult as saying that another person had to take a step back for the good of the party, he said, referring to the charges brought by the police against PN MP Francis Zammit Dimech. The former minister has been charged with involuntary homicide along with the rest of the Seabank hotel board over a fatal workplace accident some years back.

Dr Busuttil said that when he looked into the case he saw that the police should not have taken any steps against Zammit Dimech. “I took the decision that Francis should not be dismissed from the party because he was in no way involved in the case. Furthermore he is not a government minister. This is different from the case where the Justice Minister had an accident in his private car. We did not call for his sacking from Parliament or the Labour Party but for a temporary suspension as minister until the case was heard, in order to avoid any conflict of interest.”

Dr Busuttil said that being in Opposition does not mean that one has to be negative about everything, but it is a big part of it. That is how a democracy should work and the government has to accept that criticism and act on it. “The Opposition should act as a counter balance, the other side of the story. On the other hand we should not criticise the government just for the sake of it, we have to be credible and speak about the wrong things. We cannot let things lie, thinks like the Gaffarena scandal and the visa scam. The government has still not done anything about them and we cannot let it sweep these scandals under the carpet.”

Dr Busuttil said that, two-and-a-half years before the general election, the PN is not only criticising the government’s wrongdoing but is also coming up with our proposals. “These include the guidelines for clean and ethical guidelines we are currently drafting, including a new code of ethics for ministers that will be enacted on day one of a new PN government.”

The PN Leader accused the government of weakening the current code of ethics. “This government is intent on lowering standards instead of raising them.

The PM, he said, had also boasted about his roadmaps for the energy, health and traffic sectors but, halfway through the legislature the country was still waiting to see these plans. It seemed, he said, that Dr Muscat had lied about these plans.

Dr Busuttil said Labour’s policies lacked ethics. This included the way in which it gave jobs to the boys, many of them sensitive roles in sensitive sectors. This was harmful to the country.  “14,000 residence permits were given out last year alone, the same size as the population of Mosta or the number of migrants who arrived in Malta in the past 10 years. We do not know how many of these were given their pemits as part of the recently uncovered visa scam. This is a consequence of giving important roles to unqualified people simply because they are close to the administration.”