Just before Joseph Muscat announced the date for the next general election, he said when he was reacting to the budget surplus that he would not allow anyone to jeopardise the country’s economic and financial success. Leaving aside the budget surplus for a moment, the warning was naturally directed at the Nationalist Party but in truth it is Dr Muscat’s government that is jeopardising the island’s economic interests.
It is doing so through the bad image he and his party in government has been giving to Malta through the involvement in the Panama Papers scandal of one of his key cabinet ministers and his chief of staff, and, also through allegations that his wife had also – like Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri – an offshore company opened on her behalf in Panama.
As if all this were not enough, Muscat’s government has been involved in a long series of other scandals that have tainted the administration to a degree that overshadows by far the worst record of any other administration before it. In keeping the minister and the chief of staff by his side at Castille, Dr Muscat ignored the national sentiment and showed an arrogance only dictators display at the height of their power.
When all this is added to the contempt he showed to three key pledges his party made to the electorate only four years ago – meritocracy, transparency and, above all, accountability – it should be clear to all that Labour does not deserve the electorate’s trust in this election.
The Labour leader is now saying he would promise to do better on these pledges, but how could he be trusted when he made a mockery of them in the first place.
As to the budget surplus and the economy, Dr Muscat is assuming, not for the first time, that his government has some magic powers in boosting economic growth.
At least this is the impression he gives when he bombastically claims that his government’s economic team is the only one capable of delivering budgetary surpluses. When Dr Muscat’s political messages are stripped of their propagandistic rhetoric, the reality is often something different.
Dr Muscat gives all the credit of the good economic outturn to his government, conveniently forgetting the turbulent times the economy had to go through just before his government managed to win the electorate’s support in 2013. The International Monetary Fund, in its country report for that year, dated July, had this to say about Malta:
“Average growth of the Maltese economy (relative to historical average) has been the best in the euro area since the beginning of the (financial) crisis. Malta suffered lower output and employment losses than most advanced economies, and none of its financial institutions required solvency or liquidity assistance.”
The way the island weathered the economic storm was no mean feat, but it would seem that to the government all this is of no consequence and that economic life in Malta began right at the time when Dr Muscat’s government took over. This is an assumption that is demeaning to Malta.
While there is no question that, after the financial crisis, the Labour administration helped boost economic growth, its record has also been marked by absolute lack of good governance, sleaze, and corruption.