New Labour deputy leader for party affairs Chris Cardona said this morning that yesterday's election for deputy leader was the start of hard work to ensure that the Labour Party was the main political force in the country.
Speaking at a Labour activity in Mellieha, Dr Cardona underlined party unity and thanked Toni Abela for having served in the post, saying he was a humble and wise person who was continuing to work for the party and the country.
He also thanked delegates and activists, but made no mention of his immediate predecessor, minister Konrad Mizzi.
He said that for a start, bridges needed to be built with Labourites who felt hurt by the present government, or were hurt by the former government and had not seen justice under the present one.
Bridges also needed to be built with those outside the party who wanted the country to make progress.
Dr Cardona said he would work for success in the prime minister's 10-year term to make Malta the best it had ever been. Indeed, he wanted his help to ensure the party remained strong even after those 10 years were up, because the country did not deserve to go back to the past.
He said he would work to continue to modernise the party and ensure that party headquarters attracted the best people and was a factory of ideas.
The party, he said, needed to move forward fast in order to keep up with the government, spurring it on and giving it its support.
Dr Cardona promised to be a bridge between the prime minister and his supporters.The activity was also addressed by the other two election candidates, Owen Bonnici and Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi, who both promised to continue to work hard within the party.
MUSCAT MAKES IT A POINT TO MENTION 'KONRAD'
Prime Minister Joseph Muscat also thanked all three candidates and said Dr Cardon had 'thrown away' his axe and wore his heart on his sleeve. He would bring all those in the party around him he said - making it a point to mention 'Konrad'.
He promised to back Dr Cardona as he sought to deliver justice to those who felt hurt, without creating new injustices.
Dr Cardona's election gave him peace of mind that there was sufficient focus on the party, and he could therefore dedicate more time to transforming Malta.
The Labour Party, he said, needed to be a reflection of society. Times were changing and the party needed to evolve and also push new policy issues.
"Our doors remain open to all" Dr Muscat said.
This was a government which had achieved enormous success, but also made some own goals. The criticism it faced, he said, did not stem from anything which the Opposition had done, but from its own mistakes. It therefore needed to be wiser, more careful, and humble enough to accept criticism.
However it also needed to be self confident enough not to assume that whatever anybody else said was right, and it was wrong. A case in point was the issue of civil unions, where despite what seemed to be majority opposition, the government pressed on and had been proved right.
Dr Muscat urged his supporters to avoid falling back into an 'us and them' tribal attitude, because that would lead to defeat at the ballot box. The country needed to harness all of its resources, despite internal criticism.
ATTEMPT TO SILENCE WHISTLE BLOWER
The Opposition, he said, was not offering alternatives to the country.
Indeed, the Opposition spoke of high standards in public life but displayed double standards.
It had emerged in court evidence that Nationalist MP Claudio Grech, before the general election, sought to silence a person with knowledge of the oil procurement scandal, telling him to dissociate himself as the case was harming Austin Gatt.
What would Simon Busuttil do about this case, Dr Muscat asked.
The PN also lacked proper ideas on transport, other than having planned to ban cars from the roads according to their odd and even registration numbers.
The same applied for the PN plan to tackle poverty. The government helped those in need while preserving their dignity. But the PN was proposing to give needy children lunches at school, thus identifying them and their predicament before their peers.
On oil prices, Dr Muscat said that had PN policies been followed, prices would have risen over the past two months as the internal oil price rose.
PN'S OZD PROPOSAL SHOULD BE WITHDRAWN
As for the PN proposal for ODZ permits to be approved by parliament, Dr Muscat said the proposal would ultimately boil down to approval by a simple majority, not a majority of two-thirds. He insisted Malta must not return to a situation where politicians decided on building permits. Perhaps some of the NGOs backing the PN proposal did not really know what was being suggested, he said.
Parliament would end up taking decisions which Mepa would have refused. And ordinary citizens would lose the right for redress.
The PN, he said, should reconsider its proposal.
It should also reconsider its proposal to put Air Malta on the stock exchange. Could that even be done in the airline's current state. Could this proposal legally be done? Did it observe EU regulations? Indeed, had Dr Busuttil consulted well informed people?