Vote Green, Vote Clean | Ralph Cassar

So you voted Labour in 2013? You were fed up of the Nationalists. You saw them plunder our environment, you saw them kowtow to the building lobbies, the hunting lobby, and other monied interests. You saw them grow into an arrogant clique. Out to destroy anybody who dares disagree with them. BWSC’s smoking gun (the Auditor’s words not mine), the oil scandal and Claudio Grech’s amnesia. Secret accounts in tax havens – they just didn’t get caught.

Fast forward to 2017. A repeat. Secret companies. More rampant, savage, development, on top of the destruction of two million square metres of land under the Nationalists. I will not go into the scale of the unethical behaviour. The sick game of ‘you are more corrupt than I’ speaks volumes of the pits that the PL and PN have reached.

Do you really believe that continuing the 51 year old PL-PN cycle will change anything? Really? More than ever before I believe that a vote that props up the PL-PN system is the real waste.

Our election message is clear: Vot Alternattiv, Vot Nadif – Vote Green, Vote Clean. Clean politics and good governance don’t appear from thin air. The fight in favour of good governance and against corruption is something we have been doing day after day. Year after year. 

The contorted arguments in favour of how the PN will make a clean sweep are just that: contorted. PN, or PL will be in government. But make no mistake it will mean more of the same. It will mean savage development, from Simon Busuttil’s proposed sponsorship for more development in Gozo through public funds, Labour and PN’s crazy undersea tunnel, which will destroy Gozo’s tourist industry, to the usual policies in the interest of the few. It will mean a car racing track on an island where there is no more space – more cement. Labour want it next to the prevalently Nationalist Ħ’Attard and Mosta, while PN want it next to predominantly Labour Ħal Safi and Żurrieq.

It gets crazier and crazier. Both PN and PL are in a race to the bottom to decrease taxes for top earners. Sounds good doesn’t it? What they do not tell you is that this will mean fewer and fewer resources for the health services – Tonio Borg already said it is unsustainable. It will mean fewer and fewer resources for schools. You see, the rich can pay out of their noses for private education. It is the schools for the majority which will feel the pinch.

They will not tackle the traffic issue – they do the opposite. They brag that they are building more roads. They do not care.

Manipulation is the order of the day. Take the extension of the development zones in 2006 – by Simon’s friends and colleagues, when he was already active in politics – it was rushed through before new, more demanding EU rules came into force. Manipulation galore. Take the illegal extension of a hotel on public land in Marfa. Silence and the usual statements about the economy.

And what about the ‘best legislation on financial services in the world’? The Panama scandal brought to light what has been happening for years on end. A system designed to help tax theft, tax fraud and the euphemism for evasion: tax avoidance. Our own house built on sand. Thanks to the parties in Parliament.

Recent history has shown that all the posturing and platitudes from both Busuttil and Muscat are just hot air and empty words. One of their parties will run roughshod over everyone for the next five years. You can either prop them up and waste your vote on them, or you can refuse to prop up the broken system and vote AD. Don’t let them fool you. You can pass on a very strong message: “No to the system. I vote Green and Clean”.

Ralph Cassar is Alternattiva Demokratika’s candidate on the seventh and 11th districts