Charlie Smith
KEITH Azzopardi has used his new year message to criticize the Gibraltar government over its Brexit arrangements.
Speaking last night, the GSD leader said that the Rock’s Brexit deal agreed by Fabian Picardo, is ‘bad’ and ‘a lost opportunity’.
Azzopardi blasted the Chief Minister’s government for agreeing a deal that allows a ‘Spanish encroachment’ into Gibraltar’s affairs.
“They have come back to Gibraltar with very little to show of any enduring value or real imagination,” he added.
The centre-right politician also raised his fears over the prospect of Theresa May’s Brexit deal being voted down by MPs in the UK Parliament next week.
May is expected to lose the vote on January 15, which Azzopardi claims would expose the Gibraltar government’s lack of Brexit planning.
He said the Picardo administration should ‘move over to allow someone else to negotiate the future relationship with the EU’.
As well as criticism, the GSD leader used his new year message to call for a number of social and economic reforms on the Rock.
“I want to see a Gibraltar where there is real equality between men and women,” he said. “I want to see more women in politics. I want to see an end to discrimination.”
Currently just two of Gibraltar’s 17 MPs are women, Samantha Sacramento of the GSLP and Marlene Hassan-Nahon of Together Gibraltar.
Azzopardi also claimed that Gibraltarians deserved to be better informed by the Picardo administration how the government is using public funds.
“The Government should account for the hundreds of millions of pounds it has borrowed,” he said.
“There is no way of actually knowing whether public finances are solid because the Government do not tell you everything that they are doing with your money.”
A new better deal for agency workers and a modern apprenticeship scheme for young people were among the other changes called for by Azzopardi.
