Were the general election to be held in a serious manner, the Nationalist Party would win, former Labour Party leader and long-serving former prime minister Dom Mintoff predicted yesterday, adding that if MLP leader Alfred Sant wanted to win, he had to make some sort of pact with him.
Speaking at a meeting of the Maltese Arise Front in Zurrieq, Mr Mintoff said while the Nationalist Party and Alternattiva Demokratika were having talks to see how they could help each other in the election, the Labour Party was still sidelining him.
"I am still trying to help Malta as best as I can. He (Dr Sant) does not want to retract what he said, maybe because I am not the traitor that I was called," Mr Mintoff said.
Mr Mintoff spoke for about an hour to a small crowd which gathered and listened attentively and approvingly in front of the local MLP club. He said he was doing his best "to reunite them with the party".
Mr Mintoff struck a sympathetic chord when he told his listeners that he had been to see a doctor before addressing the meeting.
"I have spent all my energy on the Labour Party, which in the end treated me very cruelly, worse than the British and the Church which excommunicated me (sic)," he said.
Mr Mintoff said he did not want revenge and that it was not his business who was running the party.
"But the party should see who led it over the past five years and see if the person is good enough or whether they should find someone else. I am not interested in who is leading the party, though," he said.
Mr Mintoff said for a party to win an election "it did not need to resort to lies. All one needs to do is to understand what is going on," Mr Mintoff said.
He said he had fought hard so that the "farcical referendum" would not be won by the Yes camp, but the No camp did not heed his pleas and remained splintered.
Apparently forgetting that in the UK and Ireland, both EU members, one drives on the left, as in Malta, Mr Mintoff said that once Malta joined, the EU would even dictate on which side of the road we would drive.
Mr Mintoff said various people were being sent to Malta by the EU to convince people about EU membership.
"Like the Lithuanian prime minister, who came here. all expenses paid, to tell us about how good the EU is. He knows about Malta as much as you know about Lithuania," Mr Mintoff said to the applause of those present, who were obviously unaware of the fact that no Lithuanian prime minister has visited Malta.
Mr Mintoff said an Australian company drilling for oil for the Maltese government had struck oil some five months ago but this was kept secret because this oil now belonged to the EU.
In a statement later, the government denied that any oil had been found and that the news had been hushed up.
"The last oil well to be drilled in Malta was the Agip dry well in June 2002. As for the two Australian companies operating in Malta up to five months ago, one terminated its contract last October and the other was unable to carry out any operations, let alone drill and discover oil.
"When Malta joins the European Union, any oil found in Maltese waters will belong to Malta, and not the EU. The EU has no competence on such matters," the government said.
Speaking before Mr Mintoff, fellow former Labour leader and former prime minister Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici said the decision people had to take on April 12 was a serious one. "The neutrality clause in our Constitution cannot be changed by the 48 per cent who voted Yes in the referendum," Dr Mifsud Bonnici said.
He argued that the agreement with the EU was in breach of the Constitution.