Editorial

The election campaign has not been officially declared yet, but the two major parties are clearly jockeying for the best position to win voters' minds, if not their hearts, as the general election approaches.

Only a few days after the Prime Minister launched his government's pre-Budget document, which contains some 200 proposals covering the island's foreign policy, its economy, and the social, cultural and environmental fields, the Labour Party leader, Dr Alfred Sant, launched a 648-page "Plan for a New Beginning", covering more or less the same ground but in considerably greater detail.

Actually, the Labour publication - which, Dr Sant stressed, is not the party's election manifesto - is a compendium of MLP policy documents drawn up in recent years. Dr Sant, speaking at its press launch last Monday, stressed that the document was the fruit of wide-ranging consultations with various sectors of society and of long discussions within the party.

Ironically, while the Nationalist government has accused the Labour Party either of copying its ideas or of including proposals which have been or are being carried out by the government, Dr Sant said he was pleased to see that the government was taking up the Labour Party's suggestions in various fields, adding that the pre-Budget document contained at least 29 proposals which had already been made by the Opposition!

It is good to see the Labour Party engage in consultations with NGOs, members of civil society, and individuals in drawing up its policy documents. It is worth recalling, however, that the process of "dialogue" was started in earnest by Dr Eddie Fenech Adami, on taking over as Nationalist Party leader in 1977, and for which he was more or less ridiculed at the time by the Labour Party, then in power.

Consultation in drawing up plans for governing the country, or for the annual Budget, is a positive development which shows that Maltese politics is indeed maturing, although there have been instances, even in recent years, where the outcome of a consultation process was put aside. The counter-argument to that is that consultation is all well and good, but it is then up to the administration to decide.

Undoubtedly, the Labour publication contains many praiseworthy objectives and proposals - though, uncannily, like the pre-Budget document, it ignores any reference to possible rent law reform, and makes no attempt to quantify the financial costs of individual proposals.

Voters expect their politicians to be open and honest with them. Thus, the Labour Party has rashly committed itself to halve the surcharge on water and electricity bills without saying how much this will cost the government, or how it will make up for the loss in revenue (it is estimated that such a move would cost the government at least Lm25 million a year), nor whether the promise will be kept no matter how high the international price of oil goes up - last week it hit a record $77.81 a barrel, for example.

The pre-Budget document's proposals - though obviously not binding on Government and limited to possible inclusion in the 2008 Budget - also lack a precise 'costing' element.

In some instances, it could be argued that the government would be ready to forego some revenue in the conviction that this would in fact stimulate the economy and eventually generate more revenue for the state. This, after all, could also be the reasoning behind Dr Sant's commitment to halve the utilities surcharge. But spelling out these projections and what led to them would help the average citizen form an opinion and decide which party to vote for.

Already one sees the electoral battle lines being drawn: Labour will no doubt harp on the fact that the Nationalist Party has been in power for over 20 years, except for a two-year stint in 1996-98, and that therefore it is time for a change, also because corruption and inefficiency are rampant, and that Labour has all the credentials to launch "a new beginning".

The Nationalists would point out to their various achievements in office, to the fact that EU membership has been secured, that the economy is sound, and will become sounder with the adoption of the euro (which was only possible by bringing Government's finances under control, among other things), that any change now would disrupt plans for continued expansion, and that, in the final analysis, Labour under its present leader (already briefly tried and tested) is not a credible alternative.

Alternattiva Demokratika and the newly formed Azzjoni Nazzjonali (which all other parties are doing their best to ignore) hope to cash in on disgruntlement among Nationalist voters who would never bring themselves to vote Labour. All this makes for an interesting scenario.