Labour pokes fun at Gonzi's Brazilian connection
Labour's latest billboard pokes fun at Lawrence Gonzi's Brazilian affair surrounding the relocation of a construction company from the South American continent.
Labour's latest billboard scores a goal as it depicts Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi wearing the iconic yellow and green Brazil national team football shirt with number zero embodied on his back. The billboard makes reference to latest political controversy surrounding a Brazilian company which Gonzi said was relocating its headquarters to Malta.
During the Xarabank debate between Gonzi and Labour leader Joseph Muscat on Friday, Muscat said that despite talks of a Brazilian aviation company that was meant to set up shop in Malta, this investment never materialised.
Since then, the Prime Minister said the company is not an aviation company but a construction services company which moved its headquarters to Malta. However he failed to name the company or reveal how many employees it has engaged.
In a press conference held on Thursday, Labour MPs Gino Cauchi and Chris Cardona challenged Gonzi to confirm whether the company's name is Odebrecht as has been suggested in the media and whether it has fired the four employees which manned an office in Sliema.
Cauchi said that the Prime Minister's claims that the company in question was re-locating its headquarters to Malta had been contradicted by the finance Minister Tonio Fenech, who said that the company had merely set-up a back office in Sliema.
On its part, the Nationalist Party retorted that Labour is trying to mask Muscat's error, who thought that this was an aviation company.
"The company did move to Malta. The company's decision to stay or not is irrelevant in relation to Muscat's error who went to Xarabank with the wrong information. The MLP (sic) also tries to turn investment into a political football. This is not serious, this attitude scares investment off," the PN said.
Labour is upping the ante on this issue in a clear attempt to neutralise what was deemed in some quarters as a "weak" performance by Muscat on Xarabank. This evening, the talk show will hold a post-mortem of last week's debate.
Reportedly, Odebrecht Solutions Malta Ltd, employed four persons in May at a back office at the Plaza, in Sliema.
It had relocated to Malta from Libya due to instability in the country after the uprising in 2011. The company is part of the Odebrecht conglomerate and employs well over 100,000 people worldwide in numerous fields, including construction, engineering and chemicals.