Poor polling results show that PN is failing to convince voters, Bernard Grech says

The message is getting through, but the Nationalist Party isn't convincing enough voters, party leader Bernard Grech said in his evaluation of the PN's poor polling results.

During a televised interview on the PN-owned broadcasting channel, Grech emphasised that while surveys provide a snapshot of current events, they don't need to be taken as gospel.

"Surveys are a snapshot, as I've always said before. We have to take note of them, but they're not everything. Today's snapshot shows that the party is more or less how it was in the last survey, while the leadership gap has decreased. This means that, somehow, the message is arriving but the party isn't convincing enough," he said.

A MaltaToday survey published on Sunday shows that support for Labour has continued to climb upwards, with the PN-PL gap widening to over 16 percentage points, or a difference of almost 48,000 votes.

However, despite the Prime Minister's trust rating surpassing the 50% mark for the first time since last September, Bernard Grech’s trust rating at 29.3% was an improvement of almost four points over his worst performance last month. 

Adding to his evaluation of the results, Grech said that the poor results on his part could be a consequence of the "feel good factor" driven by a decline in COVID-19 cases.

'His hands are tied, while we came up with a solution'

On the Ħondoq ir-Rummien debacle, Grech reiterated that the Nationalist Party will do what it takes to take back the private land and open it to the public again.

When Robert Abela had been asked about designating Ħondoq ir-Rummien as an outside-development zone, he said that his government's hands were tied due to local plans drafted by the Nationalist Party in 2006.

Grech rubbished this, insisting that while the Nationalist Party provided a solution, Abela suddenly tried to criticise the Opposition for being too reckless on the issue.

"First, Robert Abela said that he can't do anything and his hands are tied, blaming the Opposition by saying that it's a problem that started in 2006. What's important is that he said that his hands are tied. Meanwhile, we came up with a solution," Grech said.

"The reality is that we know what we want and we know what we can do on Ħondoq ir-Rummien. Robert Abela still doesn't know."

"While Robert Abela was indecisive, we were decisive. Ħondoq ir-Rummien would be bought by a Nationalist Party government, and given back to the Maltese and Gozitans so that they can enjoy it and have a better quality of life," he concluded.