Nationalist Party leader Bernard Grech on Wednesday took credit for the prime minister’s U-turn on controversial plans to develop a yacht marina in Marsascala bay. 

Robert Abela told an election campaign event in Marsascala on Tuesday that the project would be "stopped at once" after listening to residents and their concerns.

But the following day Grech took a dig at Abela’s scrapping of the plans, saying the Prime Minister had caved in under the PN, local council and civil society’s pressure.

"If we did this from the opposition, imagine what we can do in government, he quipped.

“It was a win for all,” he said during a press conference in Gozo, where he reiterated the party’s plans for the island.

The following are the PN’s promises if the party is elected to government on March 26:

  • Halt the privatisation of the General Gozo Hospital and open a new 400-bed hospital to ensure timely treatment.
  • Extend cancer treatment in Gozo so that patients would no longer need to travel to Malta.
  • Start offering MRI services in Gozo and deploy more human resources at outpatient clinics.
  • Set up a new Mcast campus to introduce subjects linked to the 10 sectors that the PN wants to invest in.
  • Open a Malta Enterprise branch.
  • Extend the Mġarr harbour to cater for more commuters and cargo vessels.
  • Replace the MV Nikolaos and deploy two additional Gozo Channel vessels – one of which would carry cargo.
  • Launch studies about the permanent link between Malta and Gozo and leave it up to the Gozitans to decide whether there should be a tunnel between the two islands.

Addressing the same event, MP Claudio Grech, who on Monday said he was dropping out of the electoral race, pledged that a PN government would preserve the "Gozo identity".

The island, he said, had a unique role in socio-economic growth that should, however, not come to the detriment of Gozo’s environment.

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