[WATCH] Salvu Mallia says PN ‘needs a leader like me’

A defiant Salvu Mallia said that the Nationalist Party “needs a leader like myself” during a feisty interview in which he criticised the PN for being too tame in its election campaign.

“Simon Busuttil’s mistake was that he only went halfway, and he wasn’t strong or aggressive enough when delivering his message,” the controversial PN candidate said during an interview on Xtra. “If the PN truly wants to change, then it needs me or someone like me to be its leader, and not another lawyer.

Mallia lambasted the Labour government as “fascist” and said that the PN must morph into a socialist party if it is to stand any chance of winning an election in the near future.

“Calls for the PN to return to its Christian Democrat roots are mistaken, because the country already has two centre-right capitalistic parties and now needs a centre-left and socialist one,” he said. “When Marlene Farrugia was setting up her party, I had urged her to make it a socialist party but she didn’t want to.”

However, Mallia failed to give a definitive answer when asked by host Saviour Balzan what he meant by “socialism”, merely stating that he was referring to parties that stand up for workers and emarginated people.

“The Labour Party cannot be called socialist, and it has itself been unwittingly exploited by a clique of non-Labourites such as Joseph Muscat, Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri,” he said. “The Labour government exploits workers by handing them peanuts to blind them from the reality, just as European settlers had given gifts to African natives while at the same time stealing their gold.”

Salvu Mallia was interviewed by Saviour Balzan on Xtra. Photo: James Bianchi

Asked by Balzan for his opinion on Labour government measures such as free childcare and increases in pensions and the minimum wage, Mallia said that he cannot view such measures in a positive light, and that those who disagree with him must be thick.

Despite only gaining 115 first-count votes in two districts, Mallia said he was honoured by his showing because he has lived all his life as a minority, and said that Labour’s victory was a foregone conclusion because Joseph Muscat had managed to tap into a selfish Maltese mentality.

“Maltese people don’t look beyond their doorsteps and don’t care about anything so long as it doesn’t directly impact them,” he said. “This is because Malta has been colonized by so many foreign powers that the people have grown used to the country not belonging to them. This mentality showed up clearly in the election, as the people voted according to their pockets.”