Opposition leader Simon Busuttil said today that the Opposition wanted Malta to have good relations which China. But it was important that relations were honest and transparent. This was what the Opposition had criticised the government for in the past few months.
Dr Busuttil was speaking in a Radio 101 interview shortly before starting a visit to China.
He also referred to a story in The Sunday Times of Malta after the surfacing of a road leading to property given to Mark Gaffarena.
Fast tracked works on a rural road leading to a plot of land given to Mark Gaffarena by the government showed how the government was “more interested in helping out its friends than ordinary citizens”, he said.
The Sunday Times of Malta reported how a rural road leading to a plot of land in Qormi given to Mark Gaffarena as part of a controversial €1.65 million expropriation deal has been paved with concrete from taxpayers’ money and EU funds.
However, adjacent country roads which are in dire need of repair and are used by some 120 families did not benefit from these works.
Speaking during an interview on Radio 101, Dr Busutill said the government was more interested in solving Mr Gaffarena’s problems than those of other tax payers.
“These days, to get something in Malta it seems you have to be called Gaffarena,” he said.
Turning to the planning authority demerger, Dr Busuttil said this, as well as the new environment and development plan to replace the Structure Plan, would give the government total power over the environment, planning and permitting - the sort of power it last enjoyed in the days of Dom Mintoff and Lorry Sant. Those days, he said, were synonymous with widespread corruption.
Dr Busuttil said the Opposition was giving a voice to civil society and NGOs who the government was ignoring.
This, he said, was why the Opposition had chosen to extend a ten-minute parliamentary vote to around six hours last Wednesday.
“We wanted to send out a message. We wanted people to stop and look at what is happening and we also wanted to send out a warning to the government that what is doing is not ok,” he said.
On the Greek crisis, Dr Busuttil said the government’s priority should be ensuring the national interest was protected. This meant ensuring a stable Eurozone, and that Malta’s contributions to Greece were not lost.