Nationalist Party leader Bernard Grech on Sunday claimed that government minister Anton Refalo had said that the PN had “bought out” the Judge who decided to annul the concession between the government and Steward Health Care last February on the grounds that the deal was fraudulent.

Grech said that the accusation was made while during a break in a plenary sitting in Parliament earlier this year, because Refalo was, according to Grech, not courageous enough to put the allegation on record.

It was Judge Francesco Depasquale who had ruled back in February that the concession deal between the government and Steward Health Care should be annulled. The judgement was confirmed by a Court of Appeal two weeks ago, which added to it by saying that the government had colluded with Steward on the fraudulent contract.

Grech spoke about the inaction of the Police Commissioner Angelo Gafa on the case, noting that he had told them that the police is not doing any investigations independent from a magisterial inquiry which is looking into the same deal.

Grech said that the police has an obligation to open an investigation into something as soon as it is known that a crime may have taken place.  In this case, he said, it became clear “years ago” that there was wrongdoing.

The magisterial inquiry in question was only launched after a request by Repubblika, and Grech noted that if this had not been the case, nothing would have been done.

“Back when scandals used to be uncovered, they questioned where the evidence was. When the evidence started to emerge, they told us to let the institutions work.  As soon as one of them – the law courts – decided that Robert Abela and Joseph Muscat’s governments are complicit in fraud, they attacked them and didn’t let them work,” Grech said.

He said that the PN will continue to invest in healthcare – both in terms of infrastructure and in the people who make up the industry. “But we need a strong economic model based on quality, not quantity – not one based on mediocrity and abuse as we have today.”

Grech also spoke about the “cost of living crisis”, saying that this is affecting everyone except those robbing the country and “pigging out.”

“People today feel abandoned and rightly so because we have a government which has evidently not only given up on addressing inflation, but simply doesn’t want to address it,” he said.

“That’s why the PN is offering its vision of excellence today,” he said.

He said that Abela had used the war in Ukraine and the Covid pandemic as an excuse rather than concentrating on helping people, and said that the government is abandoning people as their most basic needs become more and more expensive.

Grech reiterated some of the PN’s proposals in this regard: namely a national fund in order to help importers and exporters deal with the costs associated to shipping and other such unavoidable expenses.

He also reiterated a proposal for the COLA not to be taxed, saying that the government had ignored this despite warnings that the increase in salaries – which is being borne by employers – will simply result in an increase in prices.

He quoted from a study published this week which found that most single people aged between 25 and 30 cannot afford 95% of the properties on the market today, noting that this is a long-known phenomenon and the PN had given solutions to this.

Grech said that the government did not even provide the necessary housing for those on the waiting list for social accommodation, let alone provide affordable accommodation to the masses.

He said that the need for a new economic model is clear, so much so that even Caritas is saying as much, and that this is what the PN will implement.

PN MEP candidate Norma Camilleri and the PN’s finance spokesperson Jerome Caruana Cilia also addressed the meeting.