MLP will raise water and electricity tariffs

The editorial of The Times yesterday very aptly concluded as follows with respect to Labour's promise to halve the energy surcharge:

"Yes, but over what timespan? How could he (Alfred Sant) finance the island's energy requirements in the meantime? Labour would have to come out with far more credible propositions than this..."

I suppose that The Times' editorialist wrote the editorial on Monday, because on Tuesday, Dr Sant went even one better, on TV, and subsequently enshrined for posterity in an MLP release that he now promises he will abolish the surcharge all together!

Economists have already labelled the halfing proposal as half baked. Lino Spiteri elegently calls it "giving hostages to fortune" but also makes clear it is ludicrous.

Dr Sant - in true form and definitely his old self - does not try and argue with them...he bests them by an even crazier proposition! The Sant of old, the reason why George Abela, Lino Spiteri et al gave up in the 1996/98 period!

To top it all, his deputy leader Charles Mangion has now committed Labour on TV in Bondiplus that such reduction/abolition will remain in place for all the next legislature!

Forget about asking Dr Sant or Dr Mangion or anyone else about how they are going to finance it. They will not answer except by vague references to an ever growing economy when their record (and economic history) speaks otherwise. "Money no problem" seems an apt slogan in their regard nowadays!

They will do as they did with their promise to remove VAT - they removed VAT but brought in the much worse and half-baked CET while they never removed the much maligned cash registers. What they will do is abolish the surcharge and raise revenue by increasing the tariffs we pay for water and electricity consumption and/or the rents for meters and/or introduce some new tax like the drains tax they had introduced in 1997.

It's not only robbing Peter to pay Paul but all families who are now being assisted by the government will lose out on that assistance and the capping for industries and hotels goes up in the air, with catastrophic consequences for employment!

Coming to think of it, what is not so believable in this is that in 1997 they raised water and electricity tariffs, increased meter rents and introduced a drainage tax when they simply did not need to because oil was at $19 a barrel. Is it not obvious that Labour will have no qualms about doing the same now that they will abolish the surchage, introduced because oil has reached $100 a barrel?