The PL on Wednesday slammed Bernard Grech as "a cheap politician who knows he is becoming irrelevant" after the PN urged the police to investigate 37 people whom it said were 'linked' to the hospital privatisation deal.
On Monday the PN filed a police report demanding an investigation into 37 people which the party said were directly or indirectly involved in the annulled hospital privatisation deal.
These include Prime Minister Robert Abela and his predecessor Joseph Muscat.
In a report filed at the police headquarters in Floriana, PN leader Bernard Grech and PN MPs Adrian Delia, Joe Giglio and Karol Aquilina asked Police Commissioner Angelo Gafà to launch a full-scale investigation following the court’s dramatic ruling in February when it annulled the "fraudulent" privatisation deal for the running of three hospitals.
And on Tuesday, Grech reiterated his call leading the PL to issue a statement calling Grech a petty politician.
On Wednesday, PL MPs Randolph De Battista and Glenn Bedingfield told a press conference the PN was led by "extremists".
“When you think Grech's PN reached rock bottom, the party keeps digging,” De Battista said, adding Grech was willing to do anything to hold on to power.
“Following a disappointing turnout at the so-called national protest, which wasn’t larger than a coffee morning, he went to the police headquarters to file a police report against Prime Minister Robert Abela,” the PL politician said.
“This is the strategy of a cheap politician who knows he is becoming irrelevant,” De Battista said, adding that the PL will stand up to Grech, forbidding him from dragging down the level of the country’s politics.
De Battista said among others Grech should have asked the commissioner to investigate his own tax evasion before entering politics, or to investigate how he himself had said he would grant a pardon to the one who ordered Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder.
Bedingfield, meanwhile, called Grech “a hypocritical politician with no plan for the country”.
“All he can do is try being destructive. Less than a year ago he presented his electoral manifesto - of which he had five versions - and people realised he was incompetent as a politician.
“He is trying to hide his incompetence with such shows – going to the police commissioner... Such actions lower the level of politics.”
“Instead of debating with his political opponent, he goes to the police commissioner to try to convince people he is a better choice than the prime minister... which he isn’t,” he added.
This was the politics of a leader of a party “run by a few extremists”, he said.
Labour, Bedingfield added, would not accept such a style of politics. He claimed the PN could not stand the fact that the country had registered a record in tourism and a strong economy, and wanted to create instability.
“We won’t allow them to create instability. The country will move forward and leave Grech behind.”