Bernard Grech on Sunday warned those trying to weaken the PN - from within the party and from outside it – that the whole of Malta would suffer the consequences.
Addressing party supporters at Mosta, the PN leader paid homage to Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was assassinated five years to date in Bidnija.
He warned that while one could kill and bury a person, they could not bury her writings or halt the search for justice and the truth.
“We can come here and clap... however, if we are going to remain alienated... if we continue trying to try to weaken the party instead of strengthening it – not just from within the party, but through various means... - remember that when you weaken the PN - the only party in parliament that can stand up to the oppression of Robert Abela and his mates, those who want to silence the search for justice - you are weakening our country,” he warned.
“What you are doing is damaging us all,” he added.
Grech told those present they might hear the anger in his voice, and urged them to transform anger into a push to strengthen their work for the good of the country.
Grech added that whoever thought that, on Friday, with the guilty plea of the Degiorgio brothers, the search for justice was over, was wrong. That was just one step forward.
He also warned that while Caruana Galizia was silenced with murder, Robert Abela wanted to silence all journalists through laws that shut them up and lack of consultation.
'PN is not dormant'
The Opposition leader also had a word of advice for those at the receiving end of claims that the PN was dormant.
Such claims were another way of attacking the party’s work, he said, listing a list of things the party was acting on, including consultation over the media reform, asking for an investigation into the alleged scandal of the Marsa junction project, challenging the increased cost of living and the utilities’ billing system and exposing the planned privatisation of the Gozo Channel.
The event was also addressed by MP Claudette Buttigieg and MEP David Casa.
The MEP said Caruana Galizia was killed, among others, because she warned about how people at the highest level of government were robbing people, and five years after her assassination the biggest scandal remained the fact that those she exposed were still running free.
“We must continuously fight for the Malta we love – it is criminality, and not freedom of expression that is our enemy,” he warned.