Ever since taking office, Clyde Caruana has insisted on the principles of financial austerity as budget expenditure kept ballooning. As of last year, he began making dire warnings that budget expenditure was going too high apart from disapproving of lavish and capricious government expenditure. He also said that he wanted to reduce the deficit and the national debt and implied that this would mean cutting down on expenditure.
Yet, nothing has changed, so it seems according to Clyde Caruana himself. The Minister for Finances has announced that this year’s budget will still be “expansive” meaning that yet again, government expenditure is to increase once again.
Clyde Caruana, clearly has no control over the budget which makes him so unusual as a Finance Minister – he’s more like King Robert Abela’s account and disrespected advisor more than anything else, with no executive power and many unfulfilled dreams about balancing the budget. I find something relatable with Clyde, and I think it’s our shared experience of making sure that our mother’s kitchen products are stored together in straight rows and right angles so as to preserve as much space as possible – only that he can’t fulfill this deep desire of seeing all those products lined up perfectly together.
Understandably, that’s quite frustrating, especially when that feeling emanates from wishing to balance the national budget and reduce debt.
One of the reasons Clyde Caruana cited the ever-increasing government expenditure is that the government needs to combat inflation which has remained sticky in Europe.
There is a shared feeling among EU governments and Eurocrats in Brussels that inflation may keep going up during Q4 mainly due to pressures in gas and oil prices. Although, like last year, these fears may be exaggerated and unnecessary, it can not be denied that unexpectedly higher oil prices this year are partly causing sticking inflation in the West.
As for Malta, higher oil prices affect the government’s expenditure bill even more significantly since gas purchases are pegged to oil price changes. Clyde Caruana himself is not happy with Miriam Dalli’s gas trade and the way she is burning millions of Euros in subsidies on the energy sector without any concern whatsoever for the level of spending or the profitability of the government’s energy companies. In Clyde’s own words, Miriam Dalli “titlob il-flus biss taf”.
As a keen observer of Clyde Caruana, and after having observed him at length and read many of his speeches, he is undoubtedly in a nightmarish position, but it is also of his own making. And he hasn’t changed that much either because most probably, this is a similar situation he was in when he ran Jobs+ and was responsible for ensuring the import of thousands of third-country nations who eventually worked in a precarious and low-wage job market. He thinks the cheap labor model needs to change as well, and I’m confident that his ideals would have always been consistent in supporting an increase in the minimum wage. Yet, he executed the cheap-labour policy anyway because he couldn’t do better in terms of character than being a loyal servant.
This is not a justification for his position as Minister for Finance. It is after all Clyde’s decision to allow himself to be used in this way. I’m sure he feels conflicted between staying in power to try and do the right thing among a pack of criminal barbarians, and distancing himself altogether from politics. He can get a better gig in the local finance industry with a much better salary, for sure. He is selfless, and good, but also reckless and stupid enough to work with criminals hoping he will change them or mitigate their damage.
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