Nationalist Party leader Bernard Grech insisted on Sunday that the "cosmetic reshuffle" of the Cabinet of Ministers continued to expose Prime Minister Robert Abela’s weakness.
Grech said that Abela had ended up doing a "pseudo reshuffle" because, he claimed, he faced a lot of resistance from his top executive team.
Abela on Saturday announced a surprise cabinet reshuffle, promoting MPs to new ministerial posts and relegating others.
The biggest surprise was Aaron Farrugia who lost the Transport and Infrastructure ministry and was left out of cabinet completely.
Among the highest climbers were Jo Etienne Abela, who replaced Chris Fearne as Health Minister, and Chris Bonett who was promoted from parliamentary secretary to the new Transport Minister.
Fearne will be Malta’s nominee as EU Commissioner, which means the race will soon start for a new deputy prime minister.
On Sunday, Grech said: "The reshuffle is yet another confirmation of how Robert Abela’s hands are tied and how weak he is as he cannot even make the changes he wants to".
Instead, Abela increased the size of his cabinet, with an additional expense that has to be shouldered by taxpayers, he added.
Abela's weakness was also visible when he failed to file a court case against Steward to recoup the money that had been defrauded. Instead, he was doing all he could to stall the case the Nationalist Party filed in court, he said.
“Instead of joining our case to get back the money, he is protecting those who defrauded us. Abela is going down in history as the person who protected foreign contractors instead of safeguarding the national interest,” he said in an interview on party television station NET TV.
Grech added that the Labour government left many unfulfilled promises in the health sector, including a new mental health hospital. Grech said the mental health situation was so dire that Abela should have appointed a parliamentary secretary to deal with this sector alone.
On carers and the requirement to have a basic knowledge of the Maltese language, Grech said he had made the proposal some weeks back but he had been accused of scaremongering. Now the government was acknowledging that this basic knowledge was needed.
“We are showing the direction and Labour is implementing what we are suggesting. This is why people know that Labour has no vision. We are the party with the vision,” he said.
On inflation, Grech repeated that the government should not tax the cost-of-living allowance because this was eating away at the little increase people were given to make up for the steep increases in prices, especially those of staple food.