Opposition Leader Bernard Grech on Sunday called Labour a “government of deception” for making big promises then backtracking when they were found to be unfeasible.
Referring to Labour’s 2017 promise to upgrade all roads in Malta in seven years, the PN leader observed that the roads minister was now saying this only referred to residential roads.
“This is their pattern, they try to impress you with grandiose promises and when they find they are unattainable, they backtrack,” Grech said, addressing an audience at the PN club in Attard.
“When is everyone going to realize that Labour is a government of deception, when it impacts you personally?”
Grech referred to earlier speeches by PN MPs Ian Vassallo Hagi and Joe Giglio and said the people were owed peace of mind to be able to plan for the future. Hagi has criticised the PL government for failing to make adequate investments in primary healthcare and for mismanaging a crisis in out-of-stock medicines.
Joe Giglio criticised Prime Minister Robert Abela and Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri for doing nothing to address violent crime, an unprecedented rise in traffic congestion and accidents, workplace deaths and a demotivated police force.
The people, Grech said, needed to have an assurance that when they woke up in the morning, they still had a job, they could find the medicine they needed, they had food on the table, they arrived at their destinations on time and their children were safe on the streets.
They also needed to be able to make plans for the future knowing that their basic needs are being met. This was no longer the case for many people.
Pivoting to national security, Grech said it was worrying that police officers were leaving the force just a couple of years short of being eligible for their service pension because they no longer feel empowered to do their jobs.
This was a failure of leadership that the Home Affairs Minister was making no headway in solving, he said.
“We have a minister who is incapable of making a decision and foisted a system that has totally demoralised our police,” Grech said.
“The lack of security in our country is not the police’s fault but the fault of those whose leadership and decision-making has allowed a sense of impunity to fester, where no matter what you do, there will be no consequences to your actions and if you know the minister, they’ll even erase your court sentence from the online system.”
The Office of the Attorney General, he added, was being run so inefficiently that wrong charges were often filed in court cases, allowing perpetrators of crime to get off scot-free.
“We are in a state where law-abiding citizens have no peace of mind, but those with money and power can rest easy,” he continued.
“That is why politicians like Konrad Mizzi and others like him think they can do as they please because as long as Labour is in government they have the assurance that they are protected.”
This, he added, was why the country needed the Nationalist Party’s leadership, because under the PN decisions were taken in the best interest of the community.