A party elected to government with a nine-seat majority may quickly be tempted to act as if it has been given a carte blanche. It is a bit too early to judge Labour on this score.
The party knows it is bound by its own pledges and that, in the same way it skilfully managed to sway to its side many disgruntled Nationalists, a series of wrong moves or policy decisions could just as easily drastically reduce the size of its majority. Right now, the party is still wallowing in the glory of its election victory, but, strangely, so soon after its election victory it has already made some moves that run diametrically contrary to what it promised before the election.
Voters attracted to Labour by Joseph Muscat’s pledge that it would avoid being partisan have already been disappointed by many of the appointments made.
Having been in opposition for so long, it is only natural that the new team would want to appear as if it is reinventing the wheel. This may explain the all-too-apparent urge of some enthusiastic ministers to tweak projects directly inherited from the Nationalist Administration.
However, they would soon have to come down to earth and get to grips with problems they might have thought were easy to tackle when they were sitting on the Opposition benches.
Controlling government expenditure is one of them.
Making the most, for propaganda purposes, of the Nationalists’ blunder over the honoraria issue, is, of course, par for the course in electioneering.
The way in which Dr Muscat ‘rented’ his own car to himself, at the Government’s expense, may not exactly fit into the same category of blunders but political opponents relished what appeared to them to be a self-service move on the part of the Prime Minister.
Far more damaging in the eyes of those expecting a higher level of national financial propriety is Dr Muscat’s decision to expand the Cabinet to a size that is now considered to be one of the largest in Malta’s parliamentary history.
Having a Cabinet costing €32 million more over the five-year legislature is no joke. Was this necessary? Dr Muscat obviously thinks it was but the people have yet to see whether the end result justifies such a hefty increase.
The question is: can such a minuscule island afford such a super-size Cabinet? Many would say it does not.
The Government is insisting that, despite recent warnings by the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund, it will still be able to bring the deficit in its finances down to below the three per cent threshold this year.
According to the Commission, Malta’s budget deficit forecast for this financial year is wrong and will, in fact, be higher than the threshold.
It will take time to see who is right or wrong but, whatever the projections, the Government has to exercise greater control on expenditure. This is easier said than done but, shortly after assuming office as Finance Minister, Edward Scicluna said that the three big pressures in his ministry were health, education and social payments.
He said in one interview that “new structures” had to be introduced to ease such pressures, arguing, for example, that they had to change management styles and organisational set-ups to make them more efficient. This will, of course, help a great deal but will it make the sectors financially sustainable?
With costs piling up all the time, Malta will eventually have to face the issue of sustainability with the seriousness the subject deserves.