The ‘parking’ ticket.The ‘parking’ ticket.

You’ve just left the office. It’s raining. When you reach your car, an unpleasant surprise awaits: a parking ticket affixed to your windscreen.

Then you take a closer look; something’s not right: the place of the violation is listed as Triq il-Pompi (Pump Street), the contravention is Ħlas żejjed fuq petrol u diesel (excess payment on petrol and diesel) and the local council in question is indicated as Reġjun Tagħna Lkoll (a reference to the Labour party’s electoral slogan ‘Malta for All’).

The realistic-looking tickets, found on car windscreens all over the island over the past few days, turned out to be part of the Nationalist Party’s campaign about fuel prices, directing people to its “fuel robbery calculator” website at www.dieselupetrol.com.

The campaign may have backfired, however. As pictures and accounts by people who had been ‘issued’ the tickets spread on social media, responses ranged from the mildly amused to the deeply annoyed.

One commenter deemed the campaign “marketing genius” but many others felt the message being conveyed did not outweigh their shock at having apparently been fined.

One motorist said she failed to see the funny side after being forced out of her car in the pouring rain, halfway through her commute home, to remove the ticket from her windscreen.

A Nationalist Party spokesman said the aim of the flyers was to make the public aware “of the large amounts of euros they are paying extra for petrol and diesel”.

He said the party had been putting pressure on the government to reduce fuel prices for months but, with Maltese families and businesses still paying one of the highest prices of fuel in Europe, the party felt it had to step up pressure.

“Unfortunately, Joseph Muscat and co are too stubborn to reduce fuel prices immediately.

“The response that we had from the public during the past weeks is that people and businesses are angry that they are spending so much on petrol and diesel when other European counterparts are paying fewer euros for the same amounts.”

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