Labour, PN deputy leaders debate election outcome on Reporter

The Nationalist Party’s deputy leader for party affairs Beppe Fenech Adami and Labour counterpart Toni Abela expressed concern over the rising support the far-right extremists experienced during last Saturday’s election.

The two deputy leaders were debating the election outcome on Reporter on TVM, hosted by Saviour Balzan.

Imperium Europa, headed by extremist Norman Lowell, garnered 6,761 first preference votes. Both Labour and PN agreed that the support Lowell enjoyed was worrying, due to the party’s racist and xenophobic attitude.

“The vote is outrageous, considering that Lowell claims irregular migrants should be shot and persons with disability should be killed,” Fenech Adami said.

He went on to add that the category of people who voted for Lowell were most probably self-employed workers such as plasterers and painters who feared losing their job to foreigners.

“We should find ways of ensuring and assuring them that their jobs are not threatened by the foreigners,” Fenech Adami added.

Abela agreed that this could be an opportunity for both forces to come together and tackle the issue on a common front.

Tackling the PN’s leadership issue following the Opposition’s dismal result, Fenech Adami said one should await the final outcome of the result before commenting any further of the issue. The PN’s target was to elect three seats, although the third seat is as yet not confirmed. On the much talked about mock Panini album – which featured some 200 Labour appointees – Fenech Adami admitted it could have been presented in a different way.

On his part, Abela defended the government’s meritocratic track record insisting that attacks leveled against this pledge were “exaggerated”.