Opposition Leader Bernard Grech rapped Prime Minister Robert Abela for failing to recognise Palestinian statehood during their final pre-election debate on Wednesday. 

The two party leaders went head to head in a tense debate organised by the Broadcasting Authority, trading barbs on competence, credibility and corruption. 

Grech brought up the Palestine issue as he was rebutting repeated claims by Abela that the PN is intent on sending people to war. 

Clarifying that the party has and continues to support the bolstering of defence infrastructure, he said it was hypocritical of Abela to accuse him as such when he himself had voted in favour of increasing defence spending in the EU. 

“If we agree on the same things, you cannot say that we want war and you want peace. If we are in favour of increasing defence spending, so are you, we’re talking about the same thing,” he said.

The same is true on the Palestine issue, Grech continued, where the government had said it would recognise Palestinian statehood, but failed to step up to the plate when it had the opportunity to do so. 

“We have said from the beginning that we agree on finding a two-state solution and this naturally includes recognising Palestine as a state,” he said. 

“[Abela] had the opportunity to recognise Palestine as a state, but he didn’t: once again he said one thing and did another.”

Grech said the PN agreed on recognising Palestinian statehood and urged Abela to do so. 

In March, Malta was among the signatories of a joint statement with other countries which said they were ready to recognise Palestine as a state. However, when Spain, Norway and Ireland moved ahead with those plans, Malta was conspicuously absent. 

In his rebuttal, Abela said that the PN was not credible in its foreign affairs policy, particularly when Roberta Metsola rushed to Israel following the October 7 attack. 

“In her rush to get a photo-op, she ended up shaking hands with those who contributed to 35,000 deaths in Palestine. Those hands are stained with blood and that wrong decision had consequences,” he said. 

Abela said the government has been clear: it wants to see a ceasefire and peace in the region. On Ukraine, he added that while the PN was going to “insist on the politics of armaments” the PL would safeguard peace and neutrality. 

He did not rebut the criticism of the government’s failure to recognise Palestine, despite much of the debate being characterised by the leaders eating up their own speaking time to rebuff each other in between answering questions. 

'Sewage, traffic, unsustainable development'

Turning to environmental issues, Grech charged Abela and the Labour government with failing to make any progress in this sector. Sewage spewed into the sea is forcing the closure of beaches, while traffic and unsustainable development ran rampant across the country, he said. 

Moreover, Labour mayors who try to stand up to these issues in their localities end up having to resign when they meet resistance from the central government, Grech claimed. 

The 2006 local plans

Meanwhile, Abela retorted that it was a PN government in 2006 that had changed local plans to allow for large swathes of formerly ODZ land to be developed, such as in Ħondoq, 

“That’s what Labour mayors are really up against,” he said. 

The government had conversely changed local plans in Ħondoq and Marsascala to prevent sensitive areas.

The PL government has also completed several new projects providing new open spaces for families. 

He denied that untreated sewage was being dumped at sea and said that WSC’s robust systems allowed for the treatment of such water for use in agriculture.

The debate also featured Abela and Grech going back and forth on the PN failing to publish its accounts, the government knowing about corruption in the deal with Steward, attacks on the judiciary, the country’s debt to GDP ratio, the creation of new economic niches and the track record of the parties in Brussels.