Speculating about when the general election will be held has become a boring exercise. Only events can outguess Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi. He has both the prerogative and, up to a considered extent, the timing in his hands. The latter is the key, turning on what a backbench PN Member of Parliament does on the Budget votes.
He has said he will not support the Budget. That is ambiguous. The MP might simply abstain, in which case the Speaker will give his casting vote in favour of the Government, according to precedent, allowing it to survive with massive loss of face. He might get off the fence and actually vote No on Minister Austin Gatt’s votes. Meaning the government will effectively fall, forcing the PM to finally set the date.
In that scenario Gonzi will try to turn the outcome to his advantage. He will say that the Government was impeded from finalising its great scheme of things by a betrayal from one of its own MPs in collaboration with the Opposition. He will add the sympathy card to the strategy already set to fight the election, mostly through the fear factor and by rubbishing Labour leader Joseph Muscat.
Outside the scenario of a Budget defeat the Prime Minister will continue to hang on for dear life, rolling out with his team one accelerated project announcement after the other. He will make hay about a likely fresh Budget Speech promise to play about with the income tax regime.
In this regard the Government’s credibility will not swell and it is unlikely to recover lost ground in the opinion polls. But the PM will say, hang the polls; I beat them by a fraction in 2008, who is to say I shall not do so again in 2013. The race goes on to the finishing line and Gonzi has wiggle room to extend the remaining length by opting for a long formal campaign.
All so predictable and therefore so yawn-inducing. What really counts as far as the electorate is concerned is not when the election is held, but what it will be all about. To those who do not go about blindfolded in one colour or another it is perfectly clear that the election will be about sustainability – can net public expenditure, freshly loaded with new commitments like the government-wide collective agreement and promises by both sides that have to be redeemed, hold without breaking in the form of a return to a higher absolute and proportional deficit and a ballooning public debt?
That, bared of all clever camouflage, is the hot question. The parties will not present it quite so, given that, to reiterate, both have key promises which will boomerang on them. They have, in fact, already drawn up their core approach. Both of them are promising the electorate that all will be solved through higher economic growth. The Prime Minister says it is all about jobs, education and health. Those require additional resources that can only come out of faster growth. The Opposition leader uses a simpler but more demanding approach, promising faster growth.
The Government can back its commitment with its relatively positive record, if one ignores the massive burden and threat of the growing public debt, especially if one adds debits by the rest of the public sector, like Enemalta, for which government backing is ultimately required. The Opposition has so far only drummed the higher growth target without suggesting, at this stage, how it can be achieved. In reality neither side can pull the wool over the people’s eyes.
For the determinants of growth are set by hard facts, not by political sleight of hand and easy tongues. Growth comes out of a combination of net new productive investment, both public and private, higher net visible and invisible exports and, to a lesser extent in Malta’s case, higher consumption after allowing for its import content.
How will these three factors, or a combination of them to allow net positive impact, be influenced upwards by the forthcoming government, whatever its colour and shape?
That, dear politicians, is the question raised by your common approach to the future.
The electorate will expect convincing answers which do not simply look to the past, but peer into the future, including external actors which will impact on the performance of the Maltese economy.
The rest of the campaign, billboards and all, is politicians at play.