Busuttil: ‘Muscat can win motion, but he has lost the people’

Opposition leader Simon Busuttil's press conference following confidence motion

Opposition leader Simon Busuttil called on Labour MPs and ministers not to “associate themselves with the dirt” that had been precipitated by the revelations of offshore interests held by minister Konrad Mizzi and the Prime Minister’s chief of staff Keith Schembri.

“I appeal to all you of tonight, to safeguard the national interest. Be courageous… the vote tonight is about those who feel a Panama company is no problem or not.”

He addressed senior ministers of the Labour administration separately in his speech, as he called on them to show moral fortitude and make their vote count as a sign they don’t

“This side of the House today is on the side of the people. This is what the public feels, that we have given them a voice. Prime Minister, you can run but you cannot hide. You can win in this House, but you will have lost the people’s heart out there.”

In his speech, Busuttil recounted how Labour had won an unprecedented majority three years ago that gave it the power of carrying out reforms that previous governments had no power to bring about.

“So there were great expectations for this government… but this prime minister ran down the trust he was given by the people.”

He accused Muscat of being in a state of denial about the deleterious state of governance by his administration.

“It was the Speaker himself who complained, after being booted out of the party, that contractors were donating money to the party… and that you Mr Speaker felt that your honest brand of politics was not wanted in the party.”

Busuttil also claimed that proponents of the LNG power station that the Labour government had chosen

“Isn’t it obvious that the LNG power station was a deal concocted right before the election? We had know of this deal because the same people came to speak to us before the election,” Busuttil said, to some disbelief in the House as government MPs hollered at the claim.

“The Prime Minister is in a state of denial when he says that I, as Opposition leader, was a member of the former government. I have never been, but had I been I would have been proud of being part of that government…”

Busuttil said it had been eight weeks since Konrad Mizzi was found to have made use of an offshore company, when the prime minister had said that he would kicked out any politician caught misbehaving, the day after.

“How can I convince myself that there is no corruption in the procurement of oil, or in the privatization of hospitals, when you don’t even publish the contracts. I pledge to publish all contracts when elected in government.

“The Panama offices of Mossack Fonseca have been raided in Panama and even in El Salvador, when in Malta the police commissioner does not even launch his own investigations… There are serious questions to be asked about what professional consultancy fees Konrad Mizzi was seeking to put in his bank account he wanted opened in a different part of the world…. Isn’t such a consultancy commission, a form of bribery?”

Busuttil also asked why the prime minister saw no problem with the fact that bank accounts Mizzi and Schembri wanted opened necessitated the deposit of $1 million.

“If this is not a problem for you, Prime Minister, this is a problem for the Maltese people.”

“There’s also a third offshore company [Egrant] – have you asked, Prime Minister, whose company this is, when it was registered with the those of Schembri and Mizzi. Is this some sort of ‘standard enquiry’ as well, Prime Minister?”