The rulebook actually speaks of divide and rule. The Labour Party has in fact followed that predicament for a long while now. It has magnified and at times even invented divisions within the ranks of its only threat: the PN. Let’s face it, there were times where we did not help ourselves either. Now, the much sought after serenity has come home again to Pieta. The Nationalist Party is united in its resolve to propose a new brand of politics: founded on solutions for all the people of Malta.
The PN’s unity now forces Robert Abela and his party to seek for other strategies to divert attention from the serious issues afflicting his leadership and labour’s mis-management of our country for the last ten years. After all, we hear it over and over again, in home visits, on social media and gatherings: were the Maltese to focus their attention on Labour’s massive mismanagement, they would not run the risk of allowing Labour to govern for another term.
The PN is also doing its part to be electable again. We have dedicated thousands of hours by hundreds of professionals, volunteers, candidates, and MPs to be able to produce sound policy for the next decade. We published proposals offering concrete solutions to the myriad of issues that need attention in Malta right now, from our health sector and the need to bolster research and health agreements with EU partners, to the need to alleviate the mountains of new bureaucracy on business to the wider proposals to lighten the tax burden on the middle class and eliminate the current theft from utility bills.
The PN is working hard to deserve the trust of the electorate. We believe that we should qualify for your vote because we are a capable government, not simply because labour is ridden with incompetence and corruption. We are trying hard indeed for this election not to be another choice of the lesser evil.
Labour cannot however afford this election to be about that choice between competing policies. A comparison of merits is off the cards. This is the reason why, notwithstanding at least four direct challenges, Robert Abela continues to refuse a direct one to one debate with Bernard Grech. This is also the reason why they stealthily quashed all public discussion from TVM, moving it to the second channel. The little room for information on policies and current affairs has to be entirely controlled and heavily tilted to promote the government’s daily propaganda. Hence our TVM news covers labour news to the tune of 40% of its time with PN given at best 10% overall. This is a TV station paid by your tax money we’re speaking about here.
There is roughly three times more airtime for labour on our public TV. This thing is so ridiculous that you can’t even start to describe it to an international observer. How can you imagine TF1 in France giving three times more time to Macron than to his political rivals. With presidential elections three months away, TF1, the French equivalent of TVM is actually running a very popular slot on the main news called: ‘Les Coulisses de la Campagne’, basically having journalists on the campaign trail with the main candidates. We saw Pecresse on her train trips, Melenchon visiting chicken farms and Le Pen in factories around France. Our democratic choice deserves that in Malta too. So far PBS is denying us any of that.
It seems that Robert Abela cannot afford for the full picture to come out. The little that comes out on the real picture, like the well hidden 17,000 retainer while being a cabinet member, provokes serious panic reactions. The announcement at Marsaxlokk was one such reaction. Just a few days after the media reveals the truth and right after the PN puts up billboards to emphasise Abela’s true colours, the Prime Minister and his finance Minister spent thousands from our taxes on a very fancy podium setting to tell us what was already very clear in the budget speech, and in the 400,000 euro spent in billboards and youtube adverts, in November. That budget speech had made the tax deduction cheques very clear, and yet Abela and Caruana included them once again in their press conference as if it was the news of the day. Needless to say, that detail was not clarified in TVM news either.
Abela has to resort to distractions to save his skin from the real analysis that the Maltese people will be doing before weighing their options come next election. It is our duty to bring out the truth for them to weigh carefully. It is our duty to speak of the real alternatives proposed by PN and the deep lesions that labour’s incompetence and corruption are doing to several sectors of our labour market and our economy. In this we have all the odds stacked against us, but we can’t be distracted. For Malta, we need to prevail.
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