Our politics is about deliverables. It's about what reaches you as a citizen, as a worker, as a student, an entrepreneur or a pensioner. I personnally get terribly frustrated whenever the country's political agenda becomes hijacked by the misdemenours of those in power.

I believe that whoever wants to earn our vote needs to answer the question as to what he or she wants to do with that vote. Are you using it to make our lives better? Do you have any vision or idea on how to open up opportunities and address existing challenges? Or you want to use that vote to better yourself and your current account?

I think we’ve had enough of the contradictions so evident in Labour’s frontline today. Robert Abela vehemently criticised the Gonzi administrations’ raise of €500 a month to its ministers. A few months down the line he saw to an increase of €17,000 to his own salary under a Labour government. How hypocritical. This country moved forward when it was led by people who put the advancement of our sectors of society as their foremost consideration, who put deliverables for the people as their target. This is the brand of politics that inspires me. This is why I am behind the PN’s efforts today with Dr Bernard Grech, to reach out with this kind of politics.

We want to open up greener paths for our youths. Right now, you hear of hundreds who engage in studies and technical courses but then fail to land their targeted job. Most end up doing jobs way below their aspiration and pay grade. Those who studied and qualified in crypto currencies and blockchain on the promise of Silvio Schembri’s blockchain Island ended up having to do another cycle of studies. Those who qualified in financial services or in gaming related services are seeing a market tightening with the grey list and its mountain of additional bureaucracy and mistrust. We must revert course. Where labour sowed mistrust, we must cultivate new confidence. We will start by opening up horizons with a new travel voucher assuring that every single Maltese and Gozitan youth has travelled abroad and opened up to new experiences either as part of an NGO initiative or on his/her own or within a group of friends.

Just as the PN did in the 90s when we smelled the iGaming revolution coming to Malta from a few movements in Europe, we will be anticipating industrial and technological developments and opening new paths for foreign direct investment into Malta. Channelled and buttressed with carefully designed stimuli, we will attract new industries, starting from the exciting new developments in the green economy, where over 30 million new electric cars will be threading European road in the next 10 years, to the digital revolution and beyond. We have our eyes on the continent and we will attract the new jobs which will help finish the villas for today’s youths.

Whatever Labour did good, like the steps forward on civil rights, we will consolidate, but there is also a lot of work to be done to restore Malta’s business environment to levels of trust and growth that was ours before and that we can attain again in the future.

Our job market has been left to degenerate into a series of issues that will take serious political commitment to solve one by one. On the one hand you have wage stagnation of worrying proportions. NSO statistics reveal that over a ten year period under Labour’s watch the unskilled worker’s wages barely evolved enough to cover cost of living increases. From 2012 to 2021 in fact there is just a 4% increase in salaries. This when the cost-ofliving last year rose by 4,9 on foodstuffs alone. Upskilling efforts launched in the early days of EU accession seem to have stalled. We must understand that wages and skills are two sides of the same coin. Once we stop investing in skills, we will see wages stagnate and workers striving hard to catch up with inflation. A new PN government will invest big in upskilling in current industries and the new industries we will attract. We also want to go beyond, once and for all, from the existing COLA mechanism recognised as faulty by almost anyone on the social dialogue table.

We believe that you work to live not live to work. For this reason, our politics is about delivering a quality of life and not just enough living to go by. For this reason, the environment is a main flagship in our political offer. We all remember Labour’s pledge to get rid of the ‘Cancer factory’ right? And yet a recent study by the University of Malta’s Department of Chemistry show that air quality readings exceed the WHO toxicity limit on 17 out of 92 days. Basically, air quality in Malta right now is a health hazard at last once a week.

If our air needs improvement, what to say about our seas? Last week the European Commission announced that it will take the Maltese Government to court for breaching the waste water Directive. Essentially the Ministry meant to protect our Environment was caught red handed dumping untreated sewage into the sea near Mellieha bay. Government should be the main guardian of our natural environment. Right now it seems that it is a factor adding to its prejudice. If you ask labour for a comment on this, which was not taken as the item did not make it to PBS, I’m sure we would get something like: ‘15 years ago the PN....’. That defence is now wearing thin. Labour has been in government for 10 years. It has shown itself incapable or incompetent on several fronts. It is now time to consider a change for the better.