Opposition MPs on Monday shunned a debate on the implementation of the budget measures and instead focused their speeches on the developments that culminated over the weekend with the arraignment of 11 people in connection with corruption and money laundering.
The Nationalist Party MPs insisted that the arraignments overshadowed the government’s work, including the budget, because it seriously dented good governance efforts.
Many said the budget was 'irrelevant' a term first used by Eddie Fenech Adami when he rose to reply to the budget speech days after the Tal-Barrani incidents and the shooting of Raymond Caruana at the end of 1986.
Former OPM chief of staff Keith Schembri and others including Nexia BT partners Brian Tonna and Karl Cini were on Saturday charged with corruption, money laundering and other crimes.
On Sunday Opposition leader Bernard Grech said all Nationalist MPs would use their time in parliament to emphasise and explain the gravity of the situation in the country following Saturday’s court developments.
PN MPs who spoke on Monday in sittings in the morning and the afternoon said that the government was distracted because of its efforts to fend off claims of corruption at the highest levels.
PN MP Claudio Grech said the problems were self-inflicted and that the government was in constant “political fire-fighting” mode. The country needed stability and required an alternative.
Government MPs, including ministers and parliamentary secretaries, went ahead with their speeches about the implementation of the budget, which they described as a social budget. Transport Minister Ian Borg said that the government had its priorities right and that it kept investing even at a difficult time for the local and world economies during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Minister for the Elderly Michael Farrugia, said the government was making a mistake in not reminding people how the government had found the country when it gained power in 2013.
Both ministers admitted that mistakes were committed and that those who made mistakes were facing the consequences.
Farrugia said the Nationalist Party was more concerned about focusing attention away from the government's results than the wellbeing of families. He said the opposition wanted people to forget that the government had saved jobs during the pandemic and instead wanted to harm the country's reputation, in Malta and overseas.