PM’s valid arguments

I watched the recent marathon parliamentary debate on the budget estimates. While government speakers concentrated on the budget measures, all the opposition speakers ignored the budget measures because they were instructed, or ordered, to just speak about the arraignment of 11 people on charges of money laundering, corruption and a host of other charges.

One can easily understand why the PN opposition chose to stay silent about the budget measures. How could they, with hand on heart, criticise the myriad of measures which are benefitting so many thousands of Maltese and Gozitan families and businesses? The PN opposition knew that criticising those budget measures would be tantamount to shooting at their own foot!

One after another, Nationalist MPs kept repeating parrot-like arguments about “corruption” and “money-laundering” as if these two crimes started being committed in 2013 when GonziPN was ousted from office! The supposed leader of the opposition closed the debate for the opposition with another hysterical speech.

They must have believed such a bombardment of repetitions could make the vast majority of people forget what used to happen during the PN’s 25 years in power. They didn’t realise that those watching them were at that same time remembering they had never seen any such arraignments of people charged with such crimes in the past. Not because such crimes of corruption and money laundering were not being committed for decades past but because there was never the political will to confront such criminals as is happening now under a Labour government.

If the opposition may have believed that they had scored some political points with their tactic to ignore the budget measures and resort instead to hurling insults, innuendoes etc. while depicting themselves as “honest” politicians, and whiter than snow, they hadn’t bargained for what was in store for them when Prime Minister Robert Abela rose to close the debate.

In his 30-minute or so speech, Abela demolished what the opposition speakers, particularly Bernard Grech, had thought they had built up over three days of debate. The prime minister brilliantly exposed the sheer hypocrisy of the PN opposition and that of the leader of the opposition – himself a self-admitted tax and VAT dodger for 12 years – who was reminded by Abela that evading VAT and tax is also a criminal act.

Abela mentioned a number of scandalous acts reeking of corruption and money laundering committed under PN governments, laying emphasis on the most glaring two cases: those of the three presidential pardons given to Joseph Fenech, known as Il-Ħafi, and that of Assis Queiroz, a Brazilian drug baron, who had been sentenced to 25 years in prison but who was given a pardon by the PN government and sent back to his native country Brazil.

The most telling moment of Abela’s finest speech to date was when he reminded Grech and his opposition colleagues that when they point a finger at the government side, “you have four fingers pointing at you”.

Eddy Privitera – Mosta

The road to Comino

Photo: Friends of the Earth

Can somebody please tell us how they get the lorries, the heavy road-making vehicles, the kiosks and the camper vans on to Comino?

I am sure there must be lots of locals who would like to take their cars over there for the weekend, especially after the road has been so carefully repaired.

Revel Barker – Għajnsielem

Fraud and Simon Busuttil

Roger Mifsud (April 5) either didn’t bother to check the facts or he was being disingenuous.

The Nationalist Party was in opposition doing its duty of scrutinising the government. Simon Busuttil was presented with undeniable facts which Joseph Muscat knew or should have known about and he didn’t just ignore them but lied about Busuttil. As those facts were of great gravity, as we all know now they were, in a normal country the prime minister would have resigned and not presented himself for re-election. As it involved his chief of staff, Muscat had and still has nowhere to hide.

Salvu Felice Pace – Għasri

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