Carrots for the masses: A field guide to that Robert Abela interview

There’s a certain theatre to Maltese politics, a sort of operetta performed in high-vis vests and accompanied by the background hum of jackhammers.

In his Times of Malta interview, a first for a long time, Prime Minister Robert Abela delivered a virtuoso performance: Equal parts optimism, gentle deflection, and a veritable bumper crop of carrots – enough to keep a full colony of rabbits in a state of bliss for decades.

Because if there’s one thing Abela wants us to know, it’s that Malta doesn’t need rules, discipline, enforcement, or even a plan that extends past next Thursday. No, Malta needs carrots. Big ones. Glossy ones. Incentives so generous they could make a Scandinavian social democrat blush.

The interview begins with a flourish: Abela declares that the government hasn’t delivered just a budget; it has delivered The Budget, an economic Big Bang so glorious that middle-class couples will apparently save €257,000 over 25 years.

Never mind that this requires several leaps of faith, a few acts of divine intervention, and a voodoo-level interpretation of compound interest. The point is not for you to fact-check the numbers; the point is to feel warm and fuzzy because the Prime Minister has patted you on the back and told you you’re financially thriving.

Then comes the familiar refrain: Malta’s economy is ‘the best in Europe’. Read my lips: The. Best.

We hear it and hear it (and hear it) with the earnestness of a man who has practised the line in the mirror, possibly while flexing. And if some spoilsport dares raise a hand to ask whether an economy based on perpetual construction, on a population increase fed by imported workers, and on the national pastime of dodging cranes (and collapsing buildings) is sustainable, then, well, you’ve clearly missed the mood music.

Abela tells us construction has “accelerated.”   That’s one way of putting it.

Another would be: We now measure the skyline in units of tower cranes per capita. But worry not, because the government has been “stringent.” When asked how, he responded with the kind of calm confidence only available to people who know you cannot, in fact, verify what “stringent” means.

And yes, ODZ development is a concern. But really, who among us hasn’t fantasised about converting a beloved stretch of countryside into an apartment block shaped vaguely like a USB stick?

Abela reminds us that many people develop land they inherited, a bit like he inherited the problem (he said). So, you see, construction isn’t a problem; it’s a cultural tradition. Like festa fireworks, but louder and more permanent.  And more polluting.

Traffic, of course, makes a cameo appearance, if only in perception.

Malta has 37 new cars a day, we’re told, as if he’s announcing exciting sales statistics rather than the mechanised slow death of the national road network.

His solution? More carrots. Free transport, park-and-ride, sea routes, and, coming soon, folks, a €3 billion mass transport project that will be ready in 15 to 20 years.

In other words: Sit tight, ignore the gridlock, and think of your descendants cruising serenely through an underground system built sometime between Justin Bieber’s second and third comebacks.   You, on the other hand, can take the bus, Joe.

The population issue is handled with the delicacy of a man cautiously carrying a wobbly cake perched on a priceless Ming vase across a crowded room. We need foreign workers, he says, because without them “people’s quality of life would suffer.” A polite way of saying: Good luck getting a coffee, a meal, or your elderly parent washed without them.

And then, inevitably, Daphne Caruana Galizia. Here, the tone shifts. Respect is affirmed. Justice is promised. Closure is invoked like a prayer. But when asked why he hasn’t been to Bidnija, he responds that there should be a monument there.

This is a man who can summon up €9.3 billion in budget rhetoric but cannot summon himself to a quiet road in Bidnija. A monument will fix it, he assures, presumably just after the metro, and just before the new ferry routes.

And what about the (artificial) hullabaloo surrounding the use of the Great Siege Monument as a protest site?  Oh, well, hey, that’s freedom of expression – the guy I fired (for other reasons) and the others, well, they can fight it out in court, can’t they?

He appears to have forgotten that the court has already ruled that the current protest is a protected right, condemning his political minion, Owen Bonnici, to be forever remembered as a Minister who acted in breach of the Constitution.

And then he has the nerve to deflect: Why the controversy every month about removing flowers, for all the world as if it’s the protesters’ fault that there hasn’t been an initiative for a monument to be put up?

For a man of his undoubted intelligence, it’s incredible how Robert Abela utterly misses the point.  It’s almost as if he chooses to do so, so that the more rabid elements of his Party don’t feel betrayed.

As for the election date? That will be determined “in the national interest.”

Which in political terms universally translates to: I’ll call it when my pollster stops hyperventilating. But he says this with a serene confidence, the same serene confidence displayed by men who insist they’re not thinking about re-election while clearly, palpably thinking only about re-election.

Perhaps the most impressive feat in the interview is Abela’s ability to turn every serious issue into an opportunity for greater incentives. Crime increasing? Incentives. Rent too high? Incentives. A meteor heading toward Malta? Incentivise it to miss.

You almost admire the purity of it. Avoiding sticks has become an ideology, one might even say a faith.

In the end, the performance is a masterclass in telling voters exactly what they want to hear while asking absolutely nothing of them. No behavioural change, no sacrifice, no collective responsibility. Just sit back, enjoy your carrots, and rest assured that all problems – environmental, infrastructural, demographic, political – can be soothed by optimism, incentives, and a construction crane or 200.

And perhaps that’s the real genius of it: Why fix problems when you can serenely narrate your way around them? In Maltese politics, it seems the true path to power lies not in solving anything, but in ensuring the audience leaves the theatre humming the tune.

Carrots, after all, are cheap. Accountability is expensive. And Malta, we are reminded again and again, is doing phenomenally well.