‘Back to the 70s under Joseph Muscat’– Stefano Mallia

A day short of the government's one-year anniversary, Nationalist MEP candidate Stefano Mallia has accused Labour of setting Malta back to the 1970s and lamented that the electorate got the short end of the stick.

"I expected much better from Joseph Muscat - a young prime minister who came from a European background and was backed by a huge majority to succeed as Malta's premier. However, rather than using these elements to change Malta's political scene, he set back Malta back to the 1970s," Mallia said.

Speaking to Sunday newspaper ILLUM, the MEP hopeful branded Labour's electoral slogan ‘Malta Tagħna Lkoll' as an "ugly joke."

"Unfortunately, when comparing the government's electoral pledges and it implemented reforms, it is evident that the electorate got the short end of the stick," Mallia underlined.

Even though the May election will be Mallia's maiden election, he is no stranger to politics and has been involved in the political scene for many years.

In 2009, Stefano Mallia was involved in the PN's MEP campaign. Only a year after it had narrowly won the 2008 general election, the Nationalist Party's campaign of the 2009 MEP campaign came to a bad end as it lost the election by a margin of 35,000 votes.

Speaking to ILLUM, Mallia accepted the "catastrophic" defeat but argued that issues pertinent to Malta and the European Union have been shelved.

Turning his attention to the nomination of Marie Louise Coleiro Preca as president, Mallia took a measured approach and congratulated her appointment.

Nevertheless he lambasted the government for not consulting the opposition over Coleiro Preca's appointment and insisted that controversies do not pertain to her appointment but to the "lack of consultation".

On Wednesday, PN leader Simon Busuttil berated the government for not consulting the opposition over the choice of social solidarity minister Marie Louise Coleiro Preca as President of the Republic.

"The government had an opportunity to choose the president after embarking on a widespread consultation process, but unfortunately, despite having a golden opportunity to do things in a different and better way than previous governments, it did not," Mallia said.

On the Public Broadcasting Services (PBS), Mallia acknowledged that there had been "biased" programmes under previous Nationalist governments but lamented that the present government has not changed this.

"In the past there had been many programmes which conveyed an obvious political bias and these were rightly removed. However, the government is a revolving door because it has now introduced new programmes which are a clear political imbalance," Mallia said.

Read more in today's edition of ILLUM.