Busuttil hits out at vindictive transfers and government reprisals

In Gozo, Simon Busuttil tells voters to treat the 11 April elections as local council elections that should not be turned into national polls in the way Prime Minister Joseph Muscat was hoping for

File photo: Simon Busuttil
File photo: Simon Busuttil

Nationalist Party leader Simon Busuttil said he would not be prejudicing any police investigation ongoing in the alleged works-for-votes that took place under the former administration, accusing Prime Minister Joseph Muscat of mudslinging in the wake of the allegations.

“I tell Muscat not to continue in his ‘Super One politics’, but to use his authority as prime minister to have the matter investigated. It is clear that he knew of these allegations himself, months before the matter became public,” Busuttil said.

It was MaltaToday that broke the story of the works-for-votes commissioned by former Gozo minister Giovanna Debono’s husband Anthony, a civil servant in the Gozo ministry, for private works for constituents paid out of the ministerial budget.

Busuttil called on voters to treat the 11 April elections as local council elections that should not be turned into national polls in the way Prime Minister Joseph Muscat was hoping for.

“Muscat has turned these elections into a general election when we are voting for our local councils,” Busuttil said, in a speech in which he also addressed concerns of political vindictiveness and fear of reprisals.

The Opposition leader said that a newly-elected PN government in future would address the “injustices” perpetrated inside the civil service, where he claimed Nationalist voters had been vindictively transferred from their posts and “their careers destroyed.”

Busuttil also called on voters not to fear passing on information to the PN, or of expressing their political views by even attending public meetings organized by the PN. “I’ve had people telling me they feared attending this meeting because of some reprisal they, or their children, would face.”

The PN leader also denounced the timely payment of a €35 compensation for the increase in cost of living, just days before the local council elections. “Don’t sell yourself to Muscat. Go cash that cheque, but remember you will be alone inside that voting booth.”

Busuttil paid tribute to the work carried out by PN-led councils in Gozo.

“People who live in Nadur know that many projects have achieved fruition. Voters know they have much to vote for, they know they have had a local council that has worked hard. This election is about nothing else but your locality,” Busuttil said.

“San Lawrenz’s restoration of the church and paving of the piazza was EU-funded, and again it was a Nationalist-majority council that achieved this: we’d say that it looks just like somewhere abroad, but indeed, this is what Gozo looks like,” the PN leader said.

Busuttil heaped similar praise on other PN-led councils, six out of the eight Gozitan councils facing re-election in the Saturday, for their unrelenting pace in capital projects for their localities.

He had nothing but criticism for the way Labour-led councils in Qala and Xaghra had squandered public funds and failed to live up to their electoral pledges. “In Qala, Labour had announced that the desalination plant at Hondoq ir-Rummien would be changed into a public swimming pool: what I found there were two billboards repeating this pledge. And in Xaghra, the Ta’ Kola windmill has not yet been restored as Labour had promised.”

He said that while the PN-led council in Kercem had delivered on the construction of a civic centre, Xaghra had not yet delivered on this similar pledge.

“In the face of this deceit… the difference between PN-led and Labour-led councils is clear. Next Saturday, you will choose that party that is making a difference to your locality,” Busuttil said.

“The Prime Minister enjoys throwing in national concerns in local elections, but even there we have something to say: where is Labour’s regional policy on Gozo? This government has removed health and education from the Gozo ministry’s portfolio, and only left it with roads construction. And what about the state of these roads?” Busuttil said to the applause of his audience.

Shadow health minister Claudette Pace, in an earlier intervention, said that a purported €200 million expression of interest for the operation of the Gozo General Hospital, and the St Luke’s and Karin Grech hospitals would only add 10 more beds to current bedstock in Gozo. The private-public project was announced in tandem with the opening of a Gozo campus for Barts Medical School.

“All I can tell Konrad Mizzi, Chris Fearne, Chris Cardona and even Joseph Muscat, is ‘shame on you’,” Buttigieg said.

MEP Therese Commodini Cachia and secretary-general Chris Said also addressed the audience.