Labour’s populist spending splurge

In a shamelessly partisan speech from Castille, Robert Abela announced the date of the next general elections while simultaneously launching his party’s electoral campaign.

Destroying any separation between party and state, the Prime Minister trumpeted his party’s electoral slogan – your dream, our project, you are Malta.

He blamed the uncertainty and turmoil caused by the war in the Middle East for calling an election one year early.

The cameras had hardly turned off before Abela began promising a massive spending splurge.

Abela knows the public is willing to turn a blind eye to his government’s abuses and excesses as long as there’s money to go round.

But the war in the Middle East threatens to wreck even the strongest economies – let alone that of a tiny island completely dependent on imports and tourists, both ferried in on the back of relatively cheap and readily available fuel. When that supply of fuel is cut and its cost multiplies, Malta will suffer – and suffer badly.

For Abela, it’s a double whammy. His revenue will fall if tourist numbers drop, while his expenditure will balloon as he tries to keep his promise of maintaining fuel and electricity prices at current rates no matter how high the oil price rockets.

Abela knows Malta will feel the pinch of the downturn. He knows people will feel it in their pockets as the cost of basic food items will inevitably rise. Abela couldn’t risk waiting. When he called snap elections, it wasn’t Malta’s interest he was seeking. It was his own.

But calling the election early isn’t enough – now he has to win it. The truth is he can’t afford to lose it. And that explains why he threw all caution and fiscal prudence to the wind.

He’s promising anything and everything: a doubling of paternity leave, six months of government funded parental leave, an extra 28 days of fully government paid leave for parents with children under the age of 2, a higher bonus of €5,000 for every child born.

He’s pledged to increase student stipends by 15% starting as from last January, a tax holiday for young people for three years up to €30,000.

He’s promised weekly increases in pension, free Gozo ferries for foot passengers residing in Gozo, the modernisation of all schools in Gozo, and a new €45 million undersea electricity cable to Gozo. No prizes for guessing why Abela is suddenly obsessed with Gozo.

Everybody knows he’s only making those promises to bag his victory. When those precious parliamentary seats are secured, those pledges will be quietly forgotten.

Nobody’s holding Labour’s feet to the fire over their failure to deliver on the multiple pre-electoral pledges from last time round – the Birżebbuġa Pininfarina project, the Shell pier, the Santa Venera greening project, Floriana’s St Anne Street pedestrianisation, the San Ġwann main road project, the new mental health hospital, a new Gozo hospital, the metro.

Labour never intended to implement any of them anyway. It knew perfectly well they were just dangling carrots before the electorate only to pull them away the minute victory was secured.

It’s been just four years since Labour last fooled the electorate, yet it’s foisting the exact same cons on the nation: Fort Campbell, Fort San Salvatore in Kalkara, Manoel Island, White Rocks.

Labour is still promising a massive spending splurge despite the massive debt it accumulated in the last four years. With a straight face, Abela told the nation he’s saved €250 million to cushion international financial shocks. In fact, he accumulated over €11.4 billion in debt and managed to amass a record deficit.

The fiscal catastrophe his proposed additional spending may inflict on the country doesn’t bother Abela. He’s got far too much at stake to worry about a few more billion euros of debt.

Labour is resorting to bribing the electorate with increasingly wackier and more unsustainable proposals – particularly at a time of heightened uncertainty.

While European countries are compelled to issue reassurances that there is enough jet fuel to last until the end of May, the tiniest island state in the EU, the country most dependent on tourism and imported goods, abandons all fiscal restraint.

Labour will do anything and everything to retain power. Because losing poses a real threat to those key figures who have been afforded protection until now.

If Labour were so confident of their majority, so convinced of their impregnable support, why is it splurging without restraint?

Labour fears the people. Those wild promises are indicative of the same nervousness which prompted Abela to bet it all on snap elections.

If Robert Abela failed to deliver on relatively less ambitious pledges from 2022 when the world economy was stronger, what are the chances that he’ll deliver on his latest grander promises at a time of global economic turmoil?

If Labour could wreak so much havoc in the last four years, how much more irreversible damage could it inflict on the nation until 2031?

By then, Labour would have been in power for 18 years. Labour’s grip on power would be so utterly calcified that dislodging them from power would be next to impossible.

The biggest cost of Labour’s proposals is not financial. The heaviest price Malta will pay is another five years of Labour chipping away at our rights, our democracy, our rule of law, our rights and freedoms.

The last time Labour completed three legislatures was an unmitigated disaster for the country and the party itself. It took Labour 25 years to recover.

Handing Labour a fourth legislature is entering uncharted territory – but judging by Labour’s latest one, it will be like hitting the jackpot for Robert Abela and his friends.

Less so for the rest of us.