Former PL minority leader and local councillor for Balzan Desmond Zammit Marmara has said that Joseph Muscat should have resigned from the post of Prime Minister immediately, rather than stay on till January.
In a Vlog post with The Malta Independent, Zammit Marmara said that right now, the situation is worrying for everyone in the country. "We have a Prime Minister who announced he will resign in January for a number of reasons, the most important of which was that there was an alleged link between the Office of the Prime Minister and the case revolving around the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia."
He said there is anger among the people "due to what they are seeing as a gross error of judgement, when it was revealed that former Minister Konrad Mizzi and former OPM Chief of Staff Keith Schembri had secret companies in Panama and despite all this, the Prime Minister left them there and kept on defending them till the last."
For these reasons, and the anger among the people, the Prime Minister announced he will resign in January, Dennis Marmara said. "My opinion, and the opinion of many, is that this is a mistake as I feel it would have been better had the Prime Minister resigned immediately due to the fact that negative news is emerging nearly each day, and every negative piece of news linked to the Prime Minister reflects on our country as well."
He said that the EU's Article 7 was already mentioned, and that if this happens, "we can even lose our right to vote in the EU Council. For this reason and other reasons tied to it, I think it would be better if the Prime Minister resigns outright."
He then turned to the PL Leadership race, and said that the next Leader would be the next Prime Minister.
"I believe the new PL Leader and Prime Minister will have a difficult time ahead, and the hardest thing will be to see that the case regarding the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia closes once and for all, for everyone's satisfaction."
"I also believe that the new leader needs to conduct a complete reform within the PL." He said that the first thing the new leader must do is clean out anyone inside the PL who has a shadow of corruption over them, or one of bad governance.
"Aside from this, the new leader must ensure that a reform takes place through which the PL will go back to its values."
He said that today there is a perception that the PL is putting the interests of prominent businessmen ahead of common citizens. He said that the public are mentioning developers who seem to do whatever they want to do damaging natural heritage, that there are businessmen operating illegally, that there is a rule for some and a rule for others.
Another point he mentioned was that he believes that national problems should be discussed in public and openly. He said that that there are people, even in the PL, who believe that if there is a problem it should be discussed behind closed doors within the party structures. He said that he does not believe in this as if this happens there could be people who would not want things to change or might have an interest in things not changing, "and could influence the process for things to remain as is."
He tipped his hat to people like Minister Evarist Bartolo, for discussing things openly on social media, adding that this is the way things should be done.
He said that once all the above occurs, then the process of national reconciliation must take place, and spoke of cutting the political tribalism that still exists.
The new Prime Minister, he said must work on the values the PL was elected by in 2013, to again introduce meritocracy in all appointments, to be the government for all Maltese and Gozitans, and to try and fix Malta's reputation