Muscat urges electorate to ‘do away with tribal politics’

An impassioned plea for national unity saw Labour leader Joseph Muscat urge voters to embrace "a change of mentality" and do away with the "tribal politics of 'us and them'."

"Who among us doesn't have a friend, a relative or a colleague who is of a different political belief? Do you want to leave them out of this future? No, because we are one. I understand that this is not an easy message to accept, especially for those who have been suffering for 25 years. But I am coming before you with this challenge. We have a historical opportunity to live a different election. I'm not interested in leading a government system that is dominated by the cliques, a system that divided a country in two."

Muscat said that past injustices would not be solved by creating new injustices. "We have to eliminate this vicious cycle. If we create new injustices who is going to suffer? In 10 years' time it will be our children facing the consequences of our decisions. We have the chance to eliminate this. If we don't, it would only result in a change of colour from blue to red and nothing else."

A sizeable crowd this evening welcomed the Labour leader under the tent in Paola who were told that "every minute and every second counted" to encourage more people to join the Labour movement.

"There are no winners yet, but time for more hard work to win this election," Muscat said with reference to election polls that place the PL at a good advantage ahead of the Nationalist party.

But Muscat insisted that it is "premature" to talk about Labour having already won the election: "We must be focused on welcoming more people within our movement. This should be our focus every minute and every second in the coming 50 days."

To applause, the Labour leader said that the first 10 days of the electoral campaign have shown that his party has learned from its past mistakes. "During these five years we listened to the people. We come before you today a changed party, ready to lead this country towards a new direction."

Muscat said this could only be achieved with "a positive attitude that is the resounding difference in the attitudes of the two main political parties".

"From our side, people are seeing a positive attitude through which we are explaining what we want to see this country achieving," Muscat said.

Repeatedly referring to the PN as "the other side", he said that the PN has embarked on a negative campaign, aimed at only scaring people. According to Muscat, the PN "has failed to learn that scaremongering campaigns don't work."

Muscat insisted that a Labour government would work for both Nationalist and Labourites: "Issues of health, education and jobs affect all families, irrespective of their political leaning."

Muscat insisted that economic growth was extremely important, especially to attract more women joining the workforce. On the property market, he reiterated there was still space for this sector to grow and said a Labour government would reduce the final withholding tax on rent from 35% to 15%. "Our proposals don't involve new expenditure for government but are aimed at giving a boost to the economy, at generating more jobs and at increasing government's revenue."

Repeating the same joke that went down well with his audience yesterday evening, Muscat said he was "apologising" for the cold that hit the Maltese islands "because anything that happens seems to be my fault..."

Inevitably, Muscat referred to the downgrade by credit rating agency Standard & Poor's by saying that the Prime Minister always boasted every time he achieved positive results, but any negative feedback tended to be Labour's fault. "But this only reflects acts of despair by someone who is still holding on to power," he said.

Insisting that concerns raised in the S&P report reflected issues raised by the Labour Party, Muscat said he was confident that his party's economic roadmap was heading in the right direction.

He said a future government would work on expanding existing sectors like that of the manufacture to achieve an economic growth that reached everyone.