'We're the underdogs': Abela echoes Muscat claims despite favourable poll
'We found a way of leaving foreign workers out of the €1,000 super bonus': PM tells PL activity
Labour is the underdog in the upcoming elections, Robert Abela said on Saturday, hours after a survey showed the PL is ahead of the Nationalist Party by around 29,000 votes.
According to the new Sagalytics poll by Vincent Marmarà published on Saturday, pollsters say Labour is poised to capture 53.1% of the vote versus the 42.6% who will likely vote PN.
But in the evening, while addressing a party event in Mosta, Abela insisted: "My friends, every election starts 0 - 0, and today we are still 0 - 0. Actually, we start as underdogs. It's always an uphill battle".
"Tell me, has there ever been a time when the PL took off with an advantage?"
Former PL leader Joseph Muscat had similarly framed the PL as the underdog to galvanise support ahead of the 2013 election.
He had repeated the claim ahead of the 2014 European parliament elections despite securing a record-breaking majority of roughly 36,000 votes the previous year, and repeated it ahead of the 2017 and 2019 elections.
On Saturday, Abela told party supporters they needed to explain the manifesto to voters who were still undecided and to convince them to vote Labour.
Earlier, he referred to pledges the PL has made to workers, including a €1,000 yearly bonus intended to “reward their hard work”, slamming a PN promise of significant tax cuts as part of a wider package of fiscal measures.
Incumbent Finance Minister Clyde Caruana has already referred to the PN proposal as a “whole mess”, arguing their maths did not add up.
But on Saturday, Abela added that while PN had promised to reward all workers in Malta, the PL had found a way to leave foreign workers out.
"[PN] said there are 300,000 workers in Malta - they got that right. We worked the €1,000 on 200,000 workers. How? We worked it out over a number of months with legal and technical people, and we found a way of leaving 100,000 foreign workers out of the €1,000 grant.
"It's a legal method that is already in place," he said, adding that people would have to be in Malta for five years and working to be entitled to that amount.