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Writing in his weekly column of your newspaper (4 July), Nationalist MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando asked: “How would the MLP have manage to finance the environmental projects which are under way at the moment without EU funding?”
The reply to this question is very simple really, dear Jeffrey: from the many millions of liri Malta would not have had to pay to the EU budget, the many millions Malta is losing as a direct result of EU membership, and the millions of liri EU membership is costing us in current expenditure to sustain the structures we have had to set up for members!
And also from the countless millions which would have been saved from so many infrastructural projects which have overrun the targeted estimates – more than Lm190 million up to months ago!
I have already explained – both on Smash TV and in all English-language newspapers, including MaltaToday on Sunday – how we are already spending at least as much (and from 2008 much more) as we may (since there is no guarantee that we will receive all the allocated funds) receive in EU funding during the 2007-2013 period.
But, ironically, I found the perfect reply to Jeffrey’s question in what his own parliamentary colleague wrote in the Sunday Times of 1 July, as quoted in MaltaToday Midweek (4 July).
The Nationalist ex-minister of finance who was forced to resign from his ministerial responsibilities on a false report, was quoted in this way: “In a clear sign of defiance, the Nationalist MP (John Dalli) wrote on Sunday, just days after the grandiose opening of Mater Dei hospital, that it was the new finance ministry, under Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi’s stewardship, which had allowed Swedish construction giant Skanska to overrun a budgeted Lm93 million price tag on the hospital… it is this (Lawrence Gonzi’s finance ministry and the country’s) loss because if they had sought advice, we would surely have saved the country many millions.”
It is from the many millions of liri EU membership is costing the country, which I have mentioned very briefly, and the many more millions of liri squandered by this irresponsible government – now also confirmed by ex-minister John Dalli – that a Labour government would have financed both environmental and infrastructural projects.
Besides this, had there been a Labour government, Malta would not have ended up from an island of sea, sun, and history, into one of cranes, dust and hideous tower blocks of concrete wherever one looks. And without the weekly stories of corruption which arenot just ‘institutionalised’, but embedded in concrete – literally!
Eddy Privitera,
Mosta
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