Prime Minister Robert Abela has an obligation to the people to clear the air over voter fraud allegations and should support calls for an investigation into the matter, Opposition Leader Bernard Grech said on Sunday. 

Grech was interviewed over the phone on the Nationalist Party’s radio station NET FM, where he said that the claims, made by a whistleblower who was previously a Labour insider, are a threat that could shake the very foundations of the country’s democracy. 

In a court application filed last week, the whistleblower who blew the lid off of a Transport Malta driving licence racket claimed that the identities of deceased voters were given to people who were ineligible to vote and who were then paid “thousands” to vote for the Labour party. 

The whistleblower, who for years worked as a translator with Transport Malta, was heavily involved with the Labour Party and even served as secretary to the Balzan Labour Club at a time.

He claims that he was forced out of Malta after 15 years in retaliation for his actions. Identity Malta maintains that he had failed to adhere to the application deadlines and his residency status. 

Grech said that the people have a right to know whether the very serious allegations were true or not and this could only be achieved if they were investigated properly. 

“If I were Robert Abela I would be telling the police commissioner to come out and say that he is investigating this and free me from this dark cloud hanging over my head. But he has not, which begs the question, what do they have to hide?” he said. 

Police Commissioner Angelo Gafa, he added, should “wake up” and ensure that the police are investigating the allegations thoroughly without fear of favour. 

A serious investigation into Identity Malta as well as the Electoral Commission should be carried out, he added. 

Identity Malta has publicly denied the whistleblower’s claims, while the Electoral Commission issued a statement saying it was not involved in the issuance of identity cards but was ready to cooperate with any investigation.

“If these allegations are untrue then they have an obligation to clear the air and if they are true, then those responsible must be brought to justice,” Grech said.

Shifting gears, Grech also spoke about the fatigue which he said the population is feeling with overpopulation and the neglected state of the country’s ambience, particularly as reports of garbage piling up on the streets increase.

If the government continued insisting an economic model that relied on the importation of foreign workers to sustain itself, then everybody’s quality of life was going to continue degrading in tandem, he said.

“This is like getting on a bus that can only carry 40 people, but finding a driver that does not care and continues allowing people to board until you are all packed like sardines,” he said.

“This is what the government has done in the past ten years, they do not care about the well-being of the Maltese and have continued to import third-country nationals to keep feeding the economy.”

This model, Grech continued, was one that not a single person in the country continued to support and must be shifted in order to correct the strain it was putting on its infrastructure.

The economy must be built on sustainable areas of activity that can be grown organically without the need to import foreign workers, he said, pointing towards sectors such as the Metaverse and digital games which show great potential to enrich the local economy and provide secure opportunities for locals.

In reaction to Grech’s comments, the Labour Party said that the Opposition leader had resorted to basing his politics on “lies”.

Grech has “fallen into absurdity”, it said, by saying that the police had not spoken about the incident when a report by the PN media on Sunday had quoted the Police Commissioner on the matter. “Either Bernard Grech didn’t have internet or once again he simply did not like the answer,” the PL said.

It added that the PN’s media wing and its supporters had engaged in a “series of lies” on a number of matters including the voter fraud allegations and said that this was politics employed by the “desperate who have learned nothing”.