We have been following Alex Borg long before his bid for the Nationalist Party’s leadership, and so far our assessment of him has consistently coincided with his actions and his results.
Alex Borg did not make a significant impact on the Opposition, with the Nationalist Party still on a gradual and slow pace of retrieving votes while the Labour Party loses votes much faster. Alex Borg has made a significant impact in his home district, where he is fighting a political battle that is rigged by a government distributing jobs to the district’s constituents, with up to a third of Gozitans working for the government.
On the other hand, on a national scale, Alex Borg has faltered significantly, and this is for the same reason we have been pointing out over and over again. Alex Borg is emulating the Labour Party in character and in policies, and voters who want genuine change are confused about this position. One of the only matters that strongly distinguished the Nationalist Party from Labour is its proposal to build a metro.
The Nationalist Party has abandoned its fight against corruption, and this has desanitised the Opposition and is giving the Labour Party a strong advantage by whitewashing its scandals and criminal impunity. As the NAtionalist Party remains silent on corruption, both political parties are increasingly looking the same, despite the fact that the general population is very much aware of the ongoing corruption by the Labour government, and many of them also know that this is damaging our country in many different ways.
On a plus side for the Nationalist Party, a cohort of newly elected candidates will significantly improve its pool of MPs. During this election campaign, the Nationalist Party was caught off guard and by surprise as it was confronted by a Labour Party proposing a Peronist economic programme while the Nationalist Party lacked anyone competent in finance to challenge this. In ridiculous desperation, the Nationalist Party tried to emulate the Labour Party’s programme.
The financial illiteracy of the Opposition Leader was laid bare when he came out mentioning “the multiplier effect according to the OECD and IMF methodology” and kept repeating this during debates over and over again. It made him look ridiculous, especially in front of a crowd of businessmen at the Chamber of Commerce debate. Evidently, no one from his inner circle explained to him that the multiplier effect is an O-level standard economic concept, and not something necessarily derived by the OECD or the IMF (it’s also applied to many economic activity and not just tax incentives).
As noted previously, Alex Borg’s inner circle is totally oblivious to the historic task at hand, and not any more competent. The Nationalist Party seems to be run by a couple of pretentious individuals who think they are geniuses because they have flipped a couple of properties at double and triple the original buying cost. I cringed and felt myself stabbed as I heard the Nationalist Party leader trying to emulate Labour’s Peronism with a naive and obvious exhibition of financial illiteracy.
Hopefully, this experience has been humbling for him. He has been pretentious enough to think that by his good looks alone, he can overturn Labour’s hegemony and make a good prime minister. I beg to differ. Labour needs to be removed from office to trigger a process of radical change in Malta. Clearly, Alex Borg is not yet inspiring enough people to fulfill the task at hand.
Website Editor
Historian and Publisher
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