The Prime Minister yesterday likened Labour’s proposal to reduce water and electricity rates to Alfred Sant’s pledge to remove VAT in 1996.
We have already been through this and we have learnt our lessons
“Back then, we had told the Labour Party that removing VAT would have a disastrous effect on the country’s finances. They introduced the CET system, which actually increased the tax burden and still pushed the deficit up. It’s a déjà vu, my friends, we have already been through this and we have learnt our lessons,” he said.
He was referring to the Labour proposal, unveiled yesterday morning, to cut electricity bills by an average of 25 per cent by next year through a public-private partnership involving an investment of some €370 million.
Speaking at a party gathering in the PN stronghold of Sliema in the evening, Lawrence Gonzi described the proposal as the latest example of the gimmicks that, he warned, Labour would resort to throughout the campaign.
“Just this morning, after Labour had spent months playing hide and seek with people on this proposal... I would have expected the party to publish its studies along with proposals. They didn’t, we questioned this... and asked how the party plans to guarantee the price of gas and oil in the coming years, for instance. Instead of engaging in a constructive dialogue, they attacked us. Typical Labour,” he said.
Unlike Labour’s proposal, the Government’s plans for the energy sector were clear and studied, he said, referring to the development of an interconnector that would link Malta with the European grid and the plan to make the Delimara plant gas-fired.
The event was more like a discussion than the previous day’s rally at the PN headquarters, with guest speakers, including former Bank of Valletta chairman Joseph F.X. Zahra, leading maritime law expert Ann Fenech, the managing director of IT company 6PM, Ivan Bartolo, and Jacqueline Vanhear, a mother-of-three, mature student, currently reading for a Phd.
Dr Gonzi took cues from the generally unpartisan comments made by the speakers to contrast his party’s record with Labour’s, which, he emphasised, was replete with examples of bad decisions. In this vein, he returned repeatedly to the 1996-1998 Sant Administration nd Labour’s decision to freeze Malta’s EU accession.
That move, which, he argued, lacked the most basic level of common sense, thrashed Malta’s reputation internationally.
“When Guido De Marco, God bless his soul, went to reactive our application, they told him: do you think EU accession is like a switch?
“That’s where our reputation was then. Fast forward to 2011 and the Libyan crisis and you will see a list of European countries coming to us for help,” he said, arguing that this was the result of having a government that everyone knew would act reasonably.