The government was approaching its end, and a growing number of people were rallying around the Nationalist Party, seeing it as the only means to get the country out of its current limbo, Bernard Grech said on Wednesday.

Speaking in a NET FM interview, Grech said the country was rudderless, with the prime minister consistently absent or failing to take decisions that put Malta first.

The latest example was how he had not commented and acted after a magistrate ruled that Labour deputy leader and former deputy prime minister Chris Fearne, Central Bank Governor Edward Scicluna and senior civil servants should stand trial for fraud in the Vitals case.

Those people, Grech said, should have been removed or been told to leave public office immediately, because of the harm they were causing Malta’s reputation. But Robert Abela’s failure to act showed he was ‘compromised’ and could not make the decisions that the country needed.

The people, Grech said, were fed up and getting increasingly angry and frustrated at how the country was being harmed because of the interests of the few. It was a frustration that did not stem only from the Vitals case, which the prime minister had defended for years, but also the government’s lack of investment in the infrastructure, the power cuts, the worsening situation in the health sector, the roads, and rapid population growth.  

The people need to achieve a new freedom from a small circle of people who thought they could make Malta their own and rob the country. The prime minister had not acted to remove the bad apples in his cart and now everything has become rotten. His interests were not the country’s but the interests of those who he had conspired with to put him in office. Or was the country being pulled down because Abela wanted those who could threaten his power base out of the way?  

The PN, Grech said, had a duty to rally the people and work with the social partners to ensure that no further harm was caused to the country. It needed to prepare itself for the change the people were seeking so that a fresh direction could be set for a better future for the country and a better quality of life for its people.