Remember the days when it was said that the Nationalist government did not have a serious national energy policy? When it was said all that the PN added to the national electricity grid was a Delimara “cancer factory” power station and a partially EU-funded Sicilian interconnector?
Incoming prime minister Joseph Muscat cried scandal at the fact that a 100% government owned Enemalta had, over the last 25 years, added two-thirds of a billion to the national debt, raising it to nearly €5 billion.
Remember how, on the advice of Konrad Mizzi, he reduced that worrying debt level by selling one-third of our national grid to Chinese interests?
After 11 years of Labour rule, the new, privately-owned Electrogas power station cannot meet the demand of the sudden 25% increase in population created by unsustainable economic policies based on immigration and foreign cheap labour.
Unfortunately, even today, Enemalta is still making huge losses.
On the other hand, the new LPG plant and the BWSC “cancer factory” have both been making a nice profit for their private owners. No surprises as to how or why that situation came about.
After last summer’s widespread blackouts, Prime Minister Robert Abela decided on a quick smart solution. He decided overnight to build another new Delimara “cancer factory”.
The initial cost of this power plant was estimated at €12 million but this has shot up to €46 million, according to tender documents. But don’t worry, says Energy Minister Miriam Dalli.
This diesel-powered plant is “only temporary” and “only a backup” and will be carted away once the second interconnector, as per the PN’s original policy, is finally started and completed.
Labour is populist to its core
At a recent rally, Abela announced that, 11 years ago, Malta’s GDP per capita was only a quarter of the eurozone average and that, today, this has risen above the eurozone average, making us “among the best in the world”.
What he failed to mention is that a similar recent EU survey has shown that, since 2016, the actual purchasing power of local wages under Labour has fallen and has not kept up with the price increases of food and other necessities.
And, yet, why does Labour continue to tax the annual statutory COLA wage increases or raise the income tax-free brackets? The answer is simple. Labour is populist to its core.
It wants to be seen as a generous soul giving out cheques and subsidies while its hidden left hand gets back some large part of it by taxing ordinary wages.
It wants you to marvel at great GDP figures on a national level while keeping from you the reality of the ever-widening wealth gap between the yacht-owning rich and the food bank poor.
It wants you to thank it for a 100-unit social housing project at Msida but not for the fact that it took it 11 long years of unnecessary delay to complete.
It wants you to think that the price of 450 food items have been slashed using a scheme that only Labour could have thought of and put in place.
It wants you to believe that the ever-increasing national debt will be repaid by the descendants of the Easter Bunny and not by your children and grandchildren.
It needs to convince you with words and smiles that the Labour establishment is made up of people who are in politics for no personal gain and who always only have your best interests at heart.
It does so through the spin that it broadcasts by way of PBS newscasts and large, self-gratulatory billboards on the roadside – which, naturally, we taxpayers pay for.
Malta needs saving.
Eddie Aquilina