‘Muscat has track-record of bad decisions’ – Gonzi

Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi drove home the message that the Labour Party cannot be trusted with the leadership of the country because of its numerous "bad decisions", and urged first-time voters to not "take risks with their future."

Gonzi was speaking on an interview broadcast on PN-owned station Radio 101 on Saturday morning.

During the interview, Gonzi hit out at Labour Leader Joseph Muscat over his statement during the Times' debate earlier this week where he said that he felt the closure of the dry-docks was a bad decision, insisting that this was done to end its drain of government coffers.

Gonzi also reiterated the PN's criticism of Muscat's past endorsement of the Cypriot economic model, while also dismissing Labour's proposals for the energy generation sector as "irresponsible".

He emphasised the PN administrations' track record on job creation, reiterating the 20,000 new job claim as well as the 'math' behind it:

"Over the past five years, 4,000 new graduates from learning institutions such as the University, MCAST and higher secondary. If they didn't manage to find work, they would be all outside protesting in the street. Instead they are celebrating," Gonzi said.

He also said that the PN administration was able to safeguard 5,000 new jobs in factories.

"Most of the jobs that were saved belonged to first time voters, the young people who graduated only recently and in 2009 saw their jobs hanging by a thread."

"My message to young people, and to first-time voters is this: think of your future. Don't take risks. Opt for a future based on strong employment and job creation," Gonzi said.

Gonzi also referred to figures released in the Labour Force Survey, rattling off a list of employment categories, listing the number of jobs created in each category in turn.

He said that while in the professional category, there were 6,400 new jobs over the past five years, in the officials category there were 4,400 new jobs, 3,000 new jobs in services, 2,800 new jobs in clerical work, and 3,700 new jobs in technical jobs.

"When you add them up - you find that there is a total of 20,300 new jobs," Gonzi said, grasping the opportunity to hit out at Labour by describing this as a "far cry" from the employment corps of the 1980s.

Gonzi said that Muscat is saying that we need to change direction, "but when you push on why one should risk a change in direction, there is nothing. No concrete proposals, or concrete reason why we would change, or what he would do differently."

"One should be terrified to hear him say that we made a mistake when we closed the Dry Dock," Gonzi said, insisting that his own duty as Prime Minister is first and foremost is toward the country, and said that Muscat "is making bad decisions even from the Opposition benches."

'"The luxury if being in opposition is not suffering consequences for making bad decisions. A Prime Minister doesn't have that luxury" Gonzi insisted.

"We made mistakes, and we have plenty of flaws," he admitted.

"But we were able to avoid the country this chaos. We could have lost the party its' popularity. But how much better is it to lose popularity but still saving jobs. I chose first and foremost not popularity, but how best I could protect jobs."

He noted that while there might have been some younger individuals who chose to jeer and boo him during the MCAST student debate - a sore point which Gonzi has been referring to often.

 "What is important?" Gonzi asked. "Those who booed, or the cranes outside building a new campus as part of government's investment into their education?"

"They have every right to not agree with me," Gonzi said, "but what I care about is whether they are able to graduate and whether they will have a job in the future."

Gonzi also referred to the recent European Commission report which said that Malta was expected to benefit from the second-highest rate of economic growth in the Eurozone, second only to Estonia.