Opposition leader Alfred Sant will tell Parliament tomorrow how his party intends to slash the electricity surcharge by half, after Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi challenged him to explain where he intended to raise the extra money needed to pay for the country's fuel.
The two leaders yesterday crossed swords in their first face-to-face debate after the budget on RTK radio, and for some moments the atmosphere was tense.
In a programme highlighted by interruptions, tempers soared as accusations over each other's track records ran rife.
Dr Gonzi urged Dr Sant to stop his mud-slinging tactics, while the Labour leader at one point accused the Prime Minister of making politically puerile arguments.
A week after the budget, Dr Gonzi told listeners that the government could boast of meeting all its targets this year. The deficit was down to below three per cent of GDP, debt was down too and all this had enabled the government to revise the income tax bands.
Dr Gonzi urged listeners to reflect on the way jobs were being created in new thriving sectors like the pharmaceutical industry and financial services.
"Judge us by what we do but also do judge Dr Sant by what he says," appealed the Prime Minister, who expressed shock that during yesterday's programme the Labour leader claimed that just 11 people had been employed in the pharmaceutical sector, when statistics showed that over 570 people had been engaged by July.
SmartCity dominated the debate for a while, as the Prime Minister appealed to Dr Sant to stop casting doubts over the multi-million project and in the process risk derailing an initiative set to create 5,600 jobs.
But Dr Sant retorted by asking why his party should trust a government which had similarly promised the creation of 3,000 jobs at Chambray in Gozo.
Challenged to explain why a recent Labour delegation to Dubai was accompanied by specific contractors, Dr Sant said they were there to "establish contacts".
Turning to the budget, Dr Sant said it lacked planning and vision. He once again questioned official statistics and claimed that the only institutions contributing to growth were the banks and the betting company.
He asked whether this was the way to measure progress.
In reality, he said, families' revenue was down by one per cent this year and factories were closing down. Cutting in, Dr Gonzi accused the Labour leader of being a voice in the wilderness, constantly painting a picture of doom and gloom and of wanting to rewrite history to put the Nationalist achievements in a bad light.
"Your analysis has to be objective - or have we bought the constituted bodies as you have claimed?" he said.
Dr Sant urged the government to stop banking on EU funding when, as things stood, no government could be guaranteed to receive EU funding in the coming year.
The Labour leader claimed the government received Lm16 million less from the EU last year than it had been promised. In the same way, he asked how the government could guarantee that it would get the Lm13 million for the education sector.
Dr Sant equated Dr Gonzi to the Hungarian Prime Minister for lying about the country's finances.
"I was shocked to hear the Prime Minister saying his aim was to put the country's finances on a sound basis when a billboard prior to the election claimed that the finances were already sound," Dr Sant said.