Did the Labour Party say in its electoral programme that the energy tariffs cut would be of an average of 25 per cent? Yes, it did, contrary to what some Nationalists MPs have been saying since the presentation of the Budget on November 4.
The political deceit does not lie in whether or not the party had actually put down ‘average’ in its electoral programme but, rather, in what the Labour politicians used to say during the election campaign.
Ask any voter what the Labour Party had exactly promised in this regard and nine out of 10 are likely to say that it had promised to reduce the energy tariffs by 25 per cent, not by an average of 25 per cent.
Politicians are experts at playing with words, however, contrary to perception, it is not easy to fool people all the time, though, of course, the reduction in the water and electricity tariffs will be welcomed by everyone.
Many are already getting weary of the kind of blind partisanship that is being shown in the debates over the Budget, often preferring to turn off their radio or television set or switch to other channels to escape the cacophony of unintelligible harangues so nauseatingly familiar in post-Budget television shows.
The indiscipline most politicians display in debates is staggering. Cut and thrust is one thing, shouting down an opponent is quite another.
Some politicians are caught quite unprepared over specific issues. When one brought up the increasing number of people on the poverty line, making it sound as if this has only happened over the eight months Labour have been in office, he was brought down to earth in no time.
The problem had, of course, been with us for far more than that. Having said that, the sooner it is tackled with greater urgency than it has been up to now, the better it will be for the country and, even more importantly, for the people concerned.
Take another angle. When, at one point in one of the debates, it was pointed out to Labour that, with the savings being made from the Delimara power station extension and the money the Nationalists had managed to negotiate for Malta from the EU, it could now very well afford to cut the energy tariffs, the counter attack from Labour was: why, then, did the Nationalist Party in government not cut the energy tariffs?
The answer was, and still is, simple. First, the Nationalists in government had wanted to move away from subsidising energy but an even more important reason than this was the need for the Administration to help firms hit by the recession. The aim was to save jobs but Labour keep forgetting it.
The Nationalists’ big mistake was in launching the subsidy-reduction exercise a bit too fast. No doubt, it is well and good to try to put debt-ridden Enemalta on a sound financial basis. However, the record ought to be correct and not twisted to suit political whims and strategy.
Labour is also taking the habit of accusing the Opposition of being negative, and, worse, of scaremongering, acting as if it is clinically clean on this score – when the record would show that it is anything but.
Most irritating too is the impression Labour attempts to give all the time that it is about to rebuild the island’s economy from scratch. Nothing could be further from the truth.