The Labour Party is currently celebrating the six-year anniversary of Robert Abela’s premiership and the cult of personality is in full swing. The Party of European Socialists is also pitching in with some of its contributions, celebrating the Maltese premier for doubling children’s allowances, improving workers’ conditions, keeping energy prices stable, and supposedly creating new digital jobs.
The Labour Party has also significantly increased pensions, but all of these social measures, which have been very effective, have also come with a rising government debt of up to €11 billion and never-ending government subsidies. So far, with a 3.5% debt to GDP ratio, the government’s finances are not in a bad shape and the Minister for Finances is actually planning to close the deficit in recurrent expenditure.
The issue right now which the Labour government does not want to admit is with regard to the sustainability of government subsidies and it is yet to be seen whether the Finance Minister’s risky gambit will play out. For a very large section of the population, things are getting worse especially due to the housing affordability crisis.
The list of the Premier’s successes is not very exhaustive to put it mildly. The Prime Minister is running the country on the default settings that were handed to him by his predecessor Joseph Muscat. Prime Minister Abela is proposing the most corrupt planning reform in history to enable a further unregulated construction-boom. He has also hijacked the Police and sabotaged the rule-of-law in an ongoing exercise aimed at distorting the Justice system under his direct control, mainly to protect his predecessor and his friends and allies in the Labour Party. He has also protected his previous business associates and is doing corrupt favours to his friends in the construction industry.
He initially tried to clamp down on Joseph Muscat and his associates in the Labour Party, actually axing some hateful propagandists from the official party’s TV channel, but he made amends again with Muscat and allowed his champion, Alex Agius Saliba, to take on the role of Deputy-Leader of the Labour Party.
Prime Minister Abela is takes from the tradition of Labour’s illiberal rulers such as Mintoff and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici and today his propaganda outlet is run by a hateful fascist. He attacked the judiciary that investigated Joseph Muscat and relaxed anti-money laundering legislation after removing Malta from the FATF’s Grey List. The dysfunction he created within the Police and the security services has enabled dangerous criminals to freely use Malta as their base and their home: such as Lilu l-King who is also a previous war lord and drug dealer.
He has also enabled the rise of dumb media and massive state-subsidised propaganda through the public broadcaster and also private media outlets. The rise of dumb media was enabled by himself and in his own personal and political interests.
Under his leadership, a very large section of the population was shielded from economic challenges: and this is basically the home-owners. There have been significant improvements to the national health service as well. On the other hand, there is also growing economic inequality while the Labour Party is building a society for itself.
The risk of the Labour Party spending more years in power is illiberal-democracy, the further empowerment of organised crime, and eventually authoritarianism – this is also Robert Abela’s legacy.
Website Editor
Historian and Publisher
Leave a Reply