Opposition Leader Bernard Grech said that the Nationalist Party will take all action possible to continue pressuring Central Bank Governor Edward Scicluna to quit the role.
In a press conference on Friday, Grech said that he has yet to receive a reply from Speaker of the House Anglu Farrugia on whether there will be an urgent meeting convened in Parliament, to discuss the matter surrounding Scicluna, who will face trial over charges against him in the Vitals hospitals deal.
He said he has offered Prime Minister Robert Abela the hand of friendship to strongly vote against Scicluna in Parliament.
“The PM does not want Parliament to meet, and he does not want to discuss, or intervene with a resolution from the two sides of the House on the matter,” Grech said, reiterating that a meeting must be held as soon as possible for institutions to continue working in the best way possible, including those governing them.
Grech spoke of the several crises the country faces, namely the infrastructural crisis, the energy crisis, crises on the country’s roads, a crisis in health services, the garbage crisis as well as that surrounding Malta’s bays and seas.
“We have a country whose population is increasing uncontrollably with tens of thousands people a year, because of a government who has no plan on how to grow the economy without growing the population,” Grech said, adding that government is not investing with a plan towards the infrastructure.
He said that there is also an institutional, as well as constitutional crisis, as an ex-Minister and an ex-Prime Minister will be facing trial over the Vitals case.
In addition, the governor of the Central Bank, who was put there three years ago by the Prime Minister, does not want to resign, despite a Court ruling there is enough prima facie evidence for him to stand trial, he said.
Grech said that Scicluna continues to lower the country’s name, and damaging its reputation, with several other risks on the country’s sectors.
Grech said that there are those people which the law applies to, and then there are those few around the Prime Minister who are part of the clique which took over the country, and frauded the people, thinking they are above the law, and that Malta is theirs.
“We will step in and continue pressuring so that everyone understands that Malta is of the whole public, and not the few, given that the PM is weak,” Grech said.
Grech said that the PL government failed to invest in the energy distribution system in these 11 years, all the while continuing to increase the population, where demand also increases.
He said that the distribution of energy system is failing, but also said that there is a problem in the generation of electricity, as government resorted to renting an emergency diesel-powered power station, to increase generation.
“They have been caught, that there is in fact a problem of generation of electricity,” Grech said, questioning what happened to the second interconnector plan.
He said three years have passed, and the second interconnector is yet to implemented.
Grech mentioned the health crisis, where people must wait hours at the Emergency, and patients are being turned away from major operations due to lack of space.
“In certain circumstances, there was not even full oxygen cylinders in hospital, even at the Emergency,” he said.
He continued that the government “manages by crisis,” and wastes funds as it has no plan. Grech spoke of traffic and uprooting of new roads without a plan, and things are being done haphazardly.
Grech said that Abela continues to lie on the drainage problem in seas and bays, by saying that the cause of the apparent contamination comes from algae bloom.
He challenged Abela to libel him, as he knows that there is drainage being thrown at sea in Mellieha, Xghajra, and St Julian’s coast, and Abela has the obligation and responsibility to ensure this does not happen.
Grech said that after the country’s blackout and drainage problems, he called on the Malta Council for Economic and Social Development (MCESD) for a meeting, and will be meeting members in the next days, and provide solutions to the consultation.
Replying to questions by the media, Grech also said he expected that Abela would also nominate a woman for the post of European Commissioner, as the EU Commission had asked for a name of a man and a woman as nominees.