I genuinely don’t get this “PN and PL are the same” take. It sounds clever but it really isn’t when you look at facts.
You can criticise PN, and yes there were individuals who weren’t saints, but the overall direction of the country under PN and under PL is not comparable.
PN didn’t just “manage” the country, they built entire pillars of the economy we still rely on today. iGaming, financial services, aviation, maritime, pharmaceuticals, tourism expansion, Valletta waterfront, SmartCity, major road and infrastructure upgrades, and of course EU membership. That last one alone changed everything for Malta. And let’s not forget PL were against it.
They also pushed education, digitalisation, and positioned Malta as a serious services-based economy rather than just surviving on traditional sectors.
Leadership matters too. Under PN you had people like Eddie Fenech Adami and Lawrence Gonzi. You can disagree with them politically, but they weren’t internationally labelled as corrupt. Compare that to having a Prime Minister under PL whose closest circle ended up at the centre of multiple scandals that made global headlines. That’s not “both the same”.
Take tourism for example. Under PN you had people like the late Dr. Francis Zammit Dimech who actually elevated the sector. Today? We had a tourism minister resign over ethics issues. That alone tells you how standards have shifted.
Then look at the scandals in recent years. The hospitals deal that we’re still paying for. The LNG situation. Constant controversies. At some point it stops being isolated cases and becomes a pattern.
And the economy argument always comes up. Yes, numbers look strong, but people are feeling the strain. Overdevelopment everywhere, infrastructure struggling, traffic getting worse, quality of life dropping. Importing large numbers of foreign workers without proper long-term planning isn’t sustainable.
Construction is another one. PN built, sure. But it was controlled and made sense. What we have now feels excessive and unplanned.
Even basic things like the environment. I used to swim regularly without a second thought. Now you hear about sewage in the sea and think twice. That’s a real decline in quality of life, not some abstract statistic.
So no, PN and PL are not the same. You can dislike both if you want, but pretending they delivered the same results or governed in the same way just doesn’t hold up.