Labour kicked off its electoral campaign with its first rally yesterday as a massive crowd overwhelmed the party’s headquarters and Mile-End Street to watch its leader speak of the MLP’s mission of “giving back hope” to the people who wanted change.
With Labour candidates standing in the background on stage in the party’s main hall, Alfred Sant harped on having no qualms appearing with all his team in a clear dig at Lawrence Gonzi’s campaign portraying him as the only face of the ruling party while sidelining his ministers.
“Not only am I not ashamed of appearing with my friends, but I will do everything possible to appear everywhere with them,” he said.
“Let’s be clear that notwithstanding all the friendship, there will be no more friendship with whoever does any wrongdoing, because Malta and the national interest come first and foremost,” he said at the end of his speech after referring to cases of corruption and incompetence happening under the Nationalist administration.
Accusing Gonzi and his party of “hunting for votes” through letters and material paid for by public money, Sant slammed the prime minister for suggesting widening the tax bands when he had ample opportunity to do that.
“Now the prime minister wants to open his hands of generosity,” Sant said about Gonzi’s promise to lower taxes from 35% to 25% for middle-income earners.
“If finances were on a sound footing, why didn’t he do this earlier?” he said, shifting his criticism onto Where’s Everybody? director Lou Bondì and Bondiplus presenter for not asking the prime minister how much such a measure would cost the country.
“I expected someone from Montiplus to ask how much this would cost,” he said, deriding Bondi’s programme in a play on words that substitutes his surname with ‘market’. And in what seemed like a reference to another Where’s Everybody? programme, Xarabank, he called it ‘the Gozo Bus’.
“The trick (of the PN) is to promise something and deliver the opposite,” he said. “Let me tell you what we’ll do. That money which you (Gonzi) wanted to spend to widen income tax bands, we’ll use to halve the surcharge so that everyone will benefit from it. Then when the economy is kick started again … we’ll widen tax bands too.”
Sant also reiterated his pledge to remove tax on overtime.
But in what sounded like an overnight change of heart about the Woods brothers and Jo Said, who have been named repeatedly by Labour as Nationalist dissidents, neither Sant nor any of the previous speakers made any mention of the blue renegades.
On the contrary, Sant attacked the “social security corruption scandal” which implicated Thomas Woods as the health minister’s assistant private secretary, although he failed to mention him.
Instead, Sant, his deputy leaders and secretary general Jason Micallef referred to Carmel Cacopardo and his “indicting letter” to the prime minister alleging that he was forced out of the MEPA Audit Office because of wrongdoing.
Sant also referred to Frank Portelli’s claims of corruption in the construction of Mater Dei Hospital, Censu Galea’s admissions of his inability to tackle problems at the Transport Authority, Jesmond Mugliett’s interference to keep his canvassers convicted of corruption at ADT and his conflicts of interest in being a shareholder of an architectural firm that was granted government contracts.
He also slammed Tony Abela for using the office of the prime minister’s letterhead for his clients, the squandering of public funds at Voice of the Mediterranean, and the case of Ninu Zammit getting compensation for land appropriated by the government years according to a scheme that was introduced years after the transfer of property.
Other targets in Sant’s speech included Gozo Minister Giovanna Debono, Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici for employing a cleaning company belonging to the family of notorious drug baron l-Imniehru, the distribution of pirated CDs during a social even organised by Michael Frendo’s canvassers, Edwin Vassallo sending his wife on EU-funded trips for the self-employed in Italy, Michael Falzon’s failure to disclose his private interests in projects by the Water Services Corporation and Louis Galea’s constituents benefiting from direct contracts given by the Foundation for Tomorrow’s Schools and the engagement of his cousins. He also lambasted Parliamentary Secretary Tonio Fenech for distributing thousands of euros from the Good Causes Fund to a private company that brought over Juventus instead of handing them over to NGOs “like Caritas or Dar tal-Providenza”.
“This won’t happen under a Labour government,” Sant declared. “I could go on with this list (of abuses) because it’s never ending.”
Change does not have to be “destructive, noisy and depressing”, he added. “Let’s bring a serene change, so we realign our country with the future,” Sant said.

kschembri@mediatoday.com.mt