Leader of the Opposition Dr Simon Busuttil has recently been reported as declaring that even Labourites of goodwill are saying: “This man is talking sense!”

Most probably, Simon Busuttil does not consider me to be among those Labourites of goodwill, as I have been critical of the PN for decades. And I am certainly not one who believes that the Leader of the Opposition always talks sense.

I will just give two examples among many others. The first one was when Dr Simon Busuttil was still deputy-leader of the PN during the 2013 general election campaign. To try and rebut the PL’s harsh criticism on the amount of medicines which were regularly out-of-stock (at that time around 130 medicines), Dr. Simon Busuttil had argued: “Even when we go to a grocery shop we may find that tins of peas are out-of-stock!” Was Dr. Busuttil talking sense or nonsense then?

The second example is a very recent one, now that he occupies the role of PN and Opposition leader. To try and dent the enormous success which the present minister Prof. Edward Scicluna and this government are having on the management of our country’s economy and finances, Dr Simon Busuttil, when speaking on Radio 101, said: “When this government boasts about the success of the economy, in fact this government would be boasting with someone else’s success (ikun qed jiftahar b’rix haddiehor)!” Of course, he was shifting the credit from this government to the previous PN government!

But when speaking about the still existing problem of patients being accommodated in corridors at Mater Dei Hospital while waiting to be transferred to a ward, Simon Busuttil placed the blame squarely on this government, when this problem was created by the PN government which had built Mater Dei smaller that St Luke’s! Did Simon Busuttil talk sense or nonsense on this too?

Eddy Privitera

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