'People expect more from us,' Muscat tells party faithful

When the electorate voted for the Labour Party in 2013, they voted for change and thus they expect more from the Labour government, Prime Minister and Labour leader Joseph Muscat said.

Addressing the party faithful at the party’s branch in Rabat, Muscat said the government has done mistakes and the electorate will hold it accountable.

“I won’t hide behind what past administrations did. We will remind people of their actions, but we will not repeat them. People expect nothing from the Nationalist Party but they expect a lot from us,” he said.

Despite losing two points, a survey carried out by MaltaToday on the politicians’ trust rating sees Muscat enjoying a convincing nine-point lead over Opposition leader Simon Busuttil. At 8.7 points the trust gap between the two leaders is the lowest ever registered in MaltaToday’s surveys.

“We made mistakes and people will hold us accountable. I won’t argue that people almost expect perfection from us. The reality is that the people have lost all trust in the others [PN] … if they wanted things to remain as before they would have voted the same again. They want a different party to lead their country and our message is that we will keep moving forward with determination to achieve results.”

Muscat said the Labour party had to keep on remind the people of its plans, of their plans for the country. He spoke of the turnaround of Enemalta’s financial situation and its new investment projects; he referred to the issue of out-of-stock medicine and how the government had managed to eliminate the amount of medicines that are usually out-of-stock.

Government’s next project was Air Malta and work on the potential it has for the country.

During his intervention, Economy Minister Chris Cardona referred to what he called was “the positive energy” of Muscat and the Labour government that resulted on in economic successes.

The government, he added, had reached a point where people were telling it “to slow down” because the country “couldn’t keep up with the strong rhythm”.