Letters to the editor – July 6, 2026

How competence ‘bought’ votes

Eddy Privitera of Naxxar writes:

Hearing both the PN’s general secretary, Charles Bonello, and the PN’s president of the executive council, Mark Anthony Sammut declare – when addressing PN councillors – that the real reason for the PN’s historical fourth electoral defeat was that “Labour had bought votes” not only has insulted the intelligence of PN councillors but also of anyone still in control of one’s mental faculties.

If both Bonello and Sammut, and also Alex Borg, want to really know how Labour “had bought votes” – to use the same absurd term used by them – here are some examples:

The very first way was by drastically reducing income tax from 35% to 25%, which the PN had failed to do. This was followed by the reduction of water and electricity tariffs by at least 25%. Both these measures had already “bought” so many votes that the PN’s electoral fortunes were doomed for possibly decades. 

Supporters celebrating Labour’s fourth historic win. Photo: Matthew Mirabelli

The introduction of free childcare must have “bought” the votes of so many parents of young children. Free school transport, free student exams, an annual rise in students’ stipends. All of these measures surely helped Labour to “buy more votes”. How about the introduction of LGBTIQ rights? Don’t Bonello, Sammut and Borg believe that such rights had also contributed to Labour’s obsession of “buying votes”?

The annual increase to pensioners, over and above the COLA increase. The fact that Labour has not raised taxation by even one cent since 2013. The substantial rise in children’s allowance given in each budget. The introduction of free public transport and some free ferry services. All of these measures couldn’t but persuade many voters “to be bought” by Labour.

Of course, the most “vote buying” initiative was the way Robert Abela, Chris Fearne and Charmaine Gauci and her formidable team of doctors, nurses and other paramedics confronted and controlled the dreaded COVID 19 pandemic.

The signing of around 140 collective agreements by the Labour government during the last four years alone, giving over 33,000 employees and professionals much better salaries and conditions, must have been one of the best ways Labour “bought votes” and drove the last nail in the PN’s electoral coffin. I can go on and on but space limitations leave just a final paragraph to explain Labour’s ‘heist’ of the election through “vote buying”.

All I have mentioned would not have been possible had Joseph Muscat, followed by Abela, not turned a dismal economy under the PN into one of the most vibrant and performing economies in the whole of Europe, if not the world, thanks to having had two top-class and exceptional finance ministers – Edward Scicluna and Clyde Caruana.

It has been competence to deliver what it pledges, not “vote buying”, which has given Labour four successive massive victories.