Prime Minister Robert Abela has not excluded calling an early election, saying that any decision will be in the national interest.
He was responding to questions from journalists outside Parliament, regarding whether he would be calling an early election following the resignation of Bernard Grech from the post of Opposition Leader on Tuesday.
A general election is declared when you have responsible leadership with the singular criteria of what is in the national interest, Prime Minister Robert Abela said
Abela said that he believes he has always made his decisions with the intention of adhering to what is best for the country. When asked further if he is not ruling out calling an election, Abela said that it is always the national interest which determines when a general election is held.
The Prime Minister commented that it is his discretion that he exercises in his prerogative according to what is determined to be in the best interest of the people. "The Nationalist Party is in total chaos," he remarked, continuing that what is important to him is that the country is kept politically stable and that it keeps encouraging investment and improving the quality of life of the people.
Asked for his reaction to Bernard Grech stepping down as the Leader of the Opposition, Abela said that he thanks Grech for his service to the country and added that he wishes him well for the future.
With that said, the Prime Minister stated that the Nationalist Party has not realised that the problem within it is much more profound than any one individual. He commented that Grech "may have been part of the problem, but he certainly was not the entire problem". Abela continued that the PN does not know what it stands for, as he questioned whether the PN's ideology is conservative, progressive, left, or right, further remarking that one cannot understand what the Opposition represents. "It is synonymous with confusion, chaos, and internal fighting," he said.
Abela said that a divided party can never provide stability for Malta, and continued that the government's job is to remain focused on leading the country in a clear direction.
The Prime Minister said that the problem in regard to how the PN will resolve the chaos within itself is up to the PN to resolve. He said that his job is to remain focused on leading the country in a clear direction with the ambitious aims outlined within Malta Vision 2050.
He remarked that an observation he would make is that when one looks back along the previous twelve years, one must ask themselves what would have happened if the PN was leading the country.
Abela said that having a party in the Opposition in chaos is bad, but continued that if that same party had to lead the country, then Malta would have had "the same situation of political instability that this country had before 2013", which the Prime Minister remarked had established a situation of unemployment within Malta. Abela said that it seems the PN has not learned any lessons since then.