Nationalist Party leader Bernard Grech said on Sunday that he is determined not to allow "frivolities" take centre stage, in a reference to the Facebook spate between MPs Adrian Delia and Jason Azzopardi last week.
He also acknowledged that more needs to be done to address the trust rating drop as reported in a survey published earlier in the day.
The survey by MaltaToday on Sunday showed Grech's trust rating dropped by 10 points to the lowest since he took over the party leadership in September.
"I was and am determined to not allow frivolities take centre stage. I was ready to go the executive and take action, but I was presented with the joint declaration and I believed it would be more useful to support this.
"This surely impacted the [MaltaToday] survey result but let’s not think this was the only reason," Grech said, insisting the party needed to continue working on bringing about change and unity.
'Nothing new on hacking'
Meanwhile, Grech said "there seems to be nothing new" with the hacking involving the Nationalist Party, saying the deadline had lapsed.
In April, the PN revealed it was the victim of an attack on its IT systems and said that hackers may have obtained information on its servers.
The operators of ‘Avaddon ransomware’ subsequently published a selection of documents, including employee details, passport pictures and a studio rota on the dark web- a part of the internet that is not indexed by search engines and requires special software to access.
A note on the hackers’ website on Saturday said that the next update was “coming soon”.
'If in government I will investigate all dubious contracts'
Grech went on to pledge to investigate "dubious" contracts if elected to government, saying people deserved to know how their money was being spent.
“I am committed to review contracts where it is clear there are shortcomings. There are contracts that we have yet to see,” he said.
The PN leader criticised the government for wanting to remove Commissioner for Standards in Public Life George Hyzler, saying Prime Minister Robert Abela did not want him to continue doing his job.
"Abela is happy when he can control and he attacks when he cannot. He does this to us too. When they attack, we know we are an obstacle and making a difference. The same is happening with Hyzler," Grech said.
On Gozo, the PN leader said the before a permanent link between the two islands is decided, a referendum on the matter should be called.
He also called for more focus on sports, saying this should not be something that was merely an extra-curricular.
If elected prime minister, the PN leader said that he would ensure national unity by not personally attacking his adversaries and promoting political maturity.