News | Sunday, 19 April 2009

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PN presents MEP candidates

Charlot Zahra
The Nationalist Party yesterday officially unveiled its candidates for the European Parliament elections, to be held in June.
The ten candidates presented by the PN are incumbent MEPs Simon Busuttil and David Casa, former MUMN chief Rudolph Cini, GRTU Director-General Vince Farrugia, Roberta Metsola Tedesco Triccas, Edward Demicoli, lawyer Alex Perici Calascione, PN president Marthese Portelli, and Frank Portelli.
In presenting the candidates at a press conference in Freedom Square in Valletta, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi paid tribute to the aspiring MEPs who he said “filled him with courage” at seeing them offer their services “in such troubled times.”
Hailing from various backgrounds, the candidates have so made their mark by often appearing at loggerheads with government policy.
Gonzi noted that the candidates “could have stayed on the sideline and criticize, but they chose to stick their neck out.”
Gonzi said that five years ago, when the EU was still a new experience for Maltese voters, there were people who were still not convinced about the benefits of EU membership.
“Now, that five years have passed, we have now seen how Malta had performed well in the EU. “Not only we have not obtained only one euros in funding, but 870 million euros, and now, more than one thousand million euros,” Gonzi said to the applause of the crowd.
Gonzi said that in order for Malta to make the best out of EU membership, it needed to elect candidates in the EP that would work “hand in hand with the Government in obtaining funds from the EP, not those who worked to prevent the Government from obtaining those funds”, citing the Sant’Antnin recycling plant as an example.
At the end of Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi’s presentation, which was read out from a script, the press conference came to an abrupt halt, leaving journalists rather surprised with this decision.

czahra@mediatoday.com.mt

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