What interests voters
Within days we have witnessed the most prominent Nationalist Party exponents – Bernard Grech, Simon Busuttil, Manuel Delia and, lastly, Jason Azzopardi – make the most politically desperate statements and actions ever since the PN was booted out of government in 2013. Their sole aim is glaringly obvious.
They want to hijack the agenda of the approaching general election, from one based on what affects people’s daily lives – the economy, education, healthcare, social services, the infrastructure and their own as well as their families’ standard of living – to an election campaign based on one word: corruption.
Grech set the ball rolling when he offered to consider giving a pardon to the alleged butchers and their mastermind of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s atrocious murder.
He was followed by Busuttil with his surreal statement that the Labour’s massive 40,000 majority electoral victory in 2017 was “a fraudulent” one.
Delia, the ‘brains’ behind the Arriva colossal fiasco, was next, with him asking the electoral commission to “disband the Labour Party”.
And, lastly, Azzopardi’s most serious and highly irresponsible accusations, alleging that Minister Carmelo Abela – of all people – to have been an accomplice in the failed HSBC bank heist as a result of which Azzopardi will now have to face the music in court since Abela, besides defining Azzopardi’s allegations as pure fantasy, urgently started libel proceedings against Azzopardi.
These PN exponents must stupidly believe that Maltese and Gozitan voters can be easily conned into forgetting the enormous good that has been done, which benefitted the vast majority of our citizens, and concentrate instead on real or invented stories of corruption which we have been reading about these last few years. Of course, they hope too that the same people they are trying to dupe have already forgotten similar, if not worse, stories which happened when they were in power but on which the institutions at that time did precisely nothing.
The PN is renowned for its ‘dirty tricks’ it always tries to win electoral contests. Who can ever forget Eddie Fenech Adami’s blatant lie on the eve of the EU membership referendum in 2003 when he accused Alfred Sant of stopping his son from entering university? Expect the same and more in the coming weeks and months.
Eddy Privitera – Mosta
Driving under the influence of drugs
I refer to the opinion piece entitled ‘Drugs and driving – are they compatible?’ (April 22).
Adrian Galea states that while the White Paper makes a very clear statement about the “prohibition of cannabis consumption in public” it surprisingly makes no reference whatsoever to driving under the influence.
It is my humble opinion that, as Galea himself concedes, once article 15A of the Traffic Regulation Ordinance does make it unequivocally clear that “No person shall drive or attempt to drive or be in charge of a motor vehicle or other vehicle on a road or other public place if he is unfit to drive through drink or drugs”, there was no need to make this specific reference to driving under the influence of drugs, whereas there was such a need to refer to a new offence, not yet on the Statute Book, consisting in the prohibition of cannabis consumption in public.
But to take the cue from Galea’s opinion, I personally think that it would be better for the respective competent authorities, once this proposed introduction becomes law, to conduct a regular educational campaign aimed at the public, along the lines of the drink and drive campaign during the festive periods, to emphasise and repeat the fact that consumption of cannabis in public as well as driving under the influence thereof are criminal offences with hefty penalties.
Mark Said – Msida
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