Busuttil urges electorate to vote for PN candidates at council elections

With five days to go for the official launch of the campaign for the local councils election, PN leader Simon Busuttil urged the electorate to vote for the candidates of the Nationalist Party.

“Most of the local councils in this year’s round have a Labour majority. We are realistic and we know that we can’t simply turn around that majority, especially in the Labour strongholds. However, we are campaigning intensively at a local level and we are doing our work,” Busuttil said during an interview on Radio 101.

The PN leader said his party, even though in opposition, has proven to be very effective in influencing and pushing for change at a national level.

“We forced the government to change its position on a number of issues and it was thanks to our constant pressure that the prices of fuel were lowered. We were effective on a national level … imagine what we can do at local level.”

Replying to questions posed by Newsdesk presenter Jerome Caruana Cilia, Busuttil talked at length about the Café Premier case, reiterating that no one other than Prime Minister Joseph Muscat must shoulder responsibility for this “scandal”.

“This is a scandal; the biggest scandal of the past two years of a Labour government. It is a scandal because the Prime Minister was directly involved. It is Joseph Muscat who has to answer for this scandal. It is a scandal because the government paid €4.2 million for a settlement that should have never taken place.”

Busuttil said there was nothing that justified the government’s bailout of the Café Premier. He said, that the Prime Minister had appeared “extremely uncomfortable” answering to questions by journalists on Tuesday, following a press conference at MaltaPost on the Youth Guarantee Scheme.

“Everyone who saw Muscat could clearly see that he appeared to be very uncomfortable, the attitude of a person who has something to hide,” Busuttil insisted.

The PN leader added that while the Prime Minister was denying that he ever discussed the Café Premier deal before the general election, “the real question is whether people can believe him”.

“While the PM wants to fool everyone into believing that he never discussed the bailout, the owners of the same café closed their doors on election day and never reopened them.

“Something stinks and it is not the coffee. It is suspicious that for this government, the most important thing to settle as soon as it’s elected is this bailout,” Busuttil said.

“The aroma coming out of the Café Premier is not of coffee but of corruption,” he quipped.

Moving on to another subject, Busuttil said Enemalta workers were facing uncertainty and living in a nightmare: “Their job is no longer guaranteed and they don’t know when they will be transferred. They feel betrayed by Joseph Muscat who is not keeping the promises made to them."