Yet another round of political campaigning is off, with the leaders of the parties fielding candidates for the council elections on April 11 promising to keep the pot boiling up to the last minute.

As if these elections were not enough, the spring hunting referendum will raise the temperature further. It seems that the Maltese cannot live unless they are in election mode, which actually disrupts our lives in a negative manner.

The campaign for this round of local council elections is likely to be dominated by claims of wrongdoing, scandals and poor governance.

Up to now, four issues have taken centre stage: the Café Premier bailout; allegations that the husband of a former Nationalist minister in Gozo used public funds to finance construction works for her constituents; the Swiss Leaks story; and the latest, the oil hedging deal with an Azerbaijani company.

More allegations surfaced yesterday. As with general elections, most people where local elections are taking place will vote for candidates from the political party they support, irrespective of whether or not they are qualified for the job, and the outcome will once again be regarded as a test of popularity for the two main parties.

Again, as in general elections, it will be the uncommitted voters who will determine the result. In the last general election, Labour was the overwhelming victor, due in no small part to the long time the Nationalist Party had been in power. Voters were also attracted by Labour’s commitments on meritocracy, transparency and accountability – in short, good governance.

On the economic front, Labour followed in the footsteps of the Nationalist administration. But two years into the legislature, do uncommitted voters think the government has kept its word over meritocracy, transparency, accountability and good governance?

There have been so many breaches of these promises that it ought to be hard for the government to escape censure. The Café Premier bailout case is perhaps one of the most serious as it has strong political undertones. The deal involves €4.2 million, a sum that could have well been used to see to the terrible state of the roads.

This bailout is yet another example of how the government is not using taxpayer’s money wisely. Another is having a super-size Cabinet, costing the country €8 million per year more than in the past.

The government has not given one single valid reason why it had to buy back the lease of a café when the State could have won it back through the court case. No amount of excuses will wipe out the fact that the government has wasted public funds. The question that has yet to be answered is: why? The excuses offered so far have been unconvincing.

Other matters cry out for an explanation. How is the government financing energy bill cuts when the power station that was supposed to make this possible and which was supposed to be ready this month is nowhere in sight? Again, no satisfactory explanation has been given.

The latest case of poor governance concerns the oil hedging deal with an Azeri company, with the Auditor General saying he had not been given enough documentation and that this detracted from accountability. It was considered as a shortcoming in terms of governance, what Joseph Muscat would call another “mistake”.

All leaders and governments make mistakes. What separates the good from the bad is how bad they are, coupled with the ability or otherwise to learn from them.

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