Grech to General Council: Malta needs PN’s vision for excellence to move forward

Opposition leader Bernard Grech has pledged his party’s “vision of excellence”, if elected, will see that Malta no longer depends “excessively” on the employment of non-EU workers.

Grech told the PN’s General Council an elected Nationalist Party would invest in Maltese talent and innovation, and direct “unprecedented” investment into education and healthcare. “These are the pillars of a society that aspires to be better,” Grech told MPs and party councillors.

Grech accused Labour of pursuing economic growth at all costs, which had left a negative impact on people’s quality of life. He listed energy blackouts, waiting lists in public healthcare, and the increase in waste as direct effects of Labour’s agenda of “quantity over quality”.

It was a reference made constantly throughout the entire General Council by all previous speakers.

Grech said clean energy, economic prosperity, and good governance were at the foundations of the PN’s vision to return to power and to reverse the shortcomings of Labour’s last decade in power.

“We are ready to govern,” Grech said. “We will carry out the necessary economic renewal to transform this country according to the people’s priorities, not for the desires of the few. We will safeguard and strengthen democracy, governing for the people not the few in power. Our vision is that of integrity, to rebuild the trust that Labour has decimated in all government institutions.”

Grech accused Labour of presiding over an economic growth that worsened people’s quality of life, and led to rising prices, lack of investment, and loss of environmental spaces.

“Malta is at a crossroads. What once glittered is certainly no longer gold. That’s what business chambers are saying; the unions warn us about precarious labour; employers complain of lack of talent and skills; lawyers and the judiciary warn of a complete collapse in the courts; our healthcare is no longer state of the art, but heaving under lack of investment and the burden of increasing patients; traffic is a daily battle; open spaces turned into apartment blocks, with a country allergic to trees more than it is allergic to the theft of millions in our tax money... how did we get here? It is easy to say it’s Labour fault, because it indeed is.”