The Labour government is currently running a very vexatious and dishonest campaign accusing the Nationalist Party of intended to remove electricity and fuel subsidies. At no point did the Nationalist Party or Opposition Leader Alex Borg declared such a policy.
Contrary to what the Labour Party is declaring, Opposition Leader Alex Borg has clearly stated that the subsidies will be kept.
On the other hand, Opposition MP and Finance Shadow Minister Adrian Delia is taking a nuanced approach and actually telling the truth about subsidies. He is arguing that subsidies are commonly used as a short-term measure until long-lasting solutions are found.
Due to infantile intransigence, corruption and incompetence, the Labour government is refusing to provide a long-term strategy to replace subsidies. Instead it is bragging that these subsidies will be continued for ever without a long-term solution to replace them.
You can keep down any kind of inflation with as much subsidies as you like, but the reason that First-World countries don’t apply such policies is that every time these policies were applied, eventually failed or created significant negative consequences to public finances and the economy. Every global financial institution in the world, from the World Bank to the IMF, advised countries to phase-out subsidies slowly so as to direct expenditure in capital and investment projects rather than recurrent expenditure.
Later on today, the Minister for Finances will be giving a presentation to argue that Malta’s finances are strong and the deficit is still being lowered. He won’t be challenged or peer-reviewed and no one will ask him any hard questions. Finance Minister Clyde Caruana is now playing into the Labour Party’s propaganda show and is conjuring reductive narratives to justify the Labour government’s massive spending spree. He will explain that although debt is increasing and subsidies are increasing again too, this is not a problem because the government is raking in more tax revenue and the deficit is still below the 3% treshold.
The Finance Minister is running a very risky fiscal policy and he knows it, but he is being roped in to play the part in the Labour Party’s electoral campaign, which is being run with lies, deception, and fake stories.
Ultimately, the government is still refusing to be transparent about its energy policy and it is discussing and signing the largest public deals with zero transparency and zero disclosure. At this point it is only EU regulation which may compel the government to be transparent in its deals, and if this regulation doesn’t exist, we should ensure that it is created.
Read below Adrian Delia’s exact words.
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