Together with a heavy dose of political theatre, election season typically brings about a flurry of announcements about new government projects, schemes and payouts, as the government of the day scrambles to ramp up the country’s feel-good factor.

This election season certainly does not disappoint.

With almost clockwork precision, the launch of the election campaign at the beginning of May fired the starting gun on dozens of government announcements over the past few weeks, from regeneration projects across the island to new investments reaching Malta’s shores.

New village squares, a football pitch and a concert area

Everybody loves a newly-restored public space, not least the residents of Kalkara who, as of last week, can enjoy a new town square boasting 16,500 square metres of open space.

Residents of Tarxien, Qormi and Mtarfa shouldn’t be jealous, after we learnt this month that their village squares are next in line for a facelift, the latter to the tune of €2m.

Burmarrad will have to settle for something a little more low-key, a new €160,000 playground that opened last week, while Xewkija has a new €255,000 “playing field” opened to the public this month.

And anyone living in San Ġwann might want to check out the town’s newest open space for themselves, after last week’s launch was widely ridiculed on social media.

There’s more to it than just squares and open spaces though.

Brand new plans for the regeneration of the Gozo hospital were unveiled last week. While details about the project’s scale were plentiful – a new anatomy centre, a new helipad, double the existing bed capacity – it is still in search of a commencement date or timeline.

Naxxar will soon have a new football pitch and gym with underground parking, at the eye-watering cost of €14.3m, with the government announcing earlier this month that works were 50 per cent completed.

And motorsport enthusiasts must have been relieved to discover that their long-awaited Ħal Far racetrack is still in the pipeline, after they were told last week that almost 25,000 tonnes of construction waste have been removed from the site.

There’s something for music lovers too, with a €16m, 52,000-square metre concert area at the Ta’ Qali National Park opened to the public in early May.

There appears to be no end in sight to the election advent calendar, with voters waking up each day to find that they have a newly restored belvedere (Żebbuġ and Marsalforn, unveiled on Thursday), a new cultural space (the long abandoned Marsa tram station, announced just a few hours later), or perhaps the completion of a long-awaited project (the oft-delayed Għadira road, finally completed on Friday).

But sometimes it’s not just about what you give, it’s also what you remove.

Residents of Mqabba and surrounding towns had long been dreading the prospect of a new asphalt plant on their doorstep, until last week, when Prime Minister Robert Abela announced that the project had been scrapped while on the campaign trail.

Cheques for workers, vulnerable households, pensioners and more

The customary pre-election cheques have once again found their way to voters’ doorsteps, this time described as “recognition” of workers’ contributions to building Malta’s economy. This despite OSCE warning that they will once again be scrutinising this practice, having already said in 2022 that it does “not conform to international standards and good practice”.

Some voters will also soon receive a second round of cheques, with some €17m set to be distributed among almost 200,000 people in the form of additional COLA payments for vulnerable households. The payments were due to be issued over the past days.

This could be the third payout that some 13,500 service pensioners and widowers would have received over the past month, after the promised increases to their pensions were processed and issued in early May.

Meanwhile, parents of students in post-secondary education will be receiving a €500 allowance in the coming days, Abela announced on Thursday.

Election time also coincided with the light at the end of the tunnel for Maltese victims of the Thalidomide scandal, who have been campaigning for compensation over the past several years. Almost €1m in compensation payments started being issued to 25 of the victims earlier this week, the government announced on Wednesday.

And let’s not forget the monthly savings thanks to the government’s subsidies on energy prices. Luckily, ARMS is on hand to calculate precisely how much each household has saved, even adding a nifty information box listing each household’s savings on its electricity bills as of this month.

Thousands of teachers also received the news they have been waiting for years when last Friday the government and the Malta Union of Teachers said they had reached agreement on the long-awaited collective agreement.

New investments, extended government services

This is not to mention the flurry of new investments announced in recent weeks –  €7.5m from a Turkish firm to manufacture wind turbine components, €12.5m to produce and export table sauces, 700 new jobs in an iGaming company expansion – and several government services being extended or offered for the first time.

The cleansing department announced this week that it will be cleaning up after feasts for free as of Monday. Earlier in the month, health authorities said that free diabetes monitoring services will be extended to reach new groups of people, while IVF waiting lists are to be slashed through a €6m scheme.

Elderly people living in Rabat and surrounding areas now have free transport taking them to their local health centre, bank or post office, after the government’s Silver T service was extended last week.

Meanwhile, a new residential parking scheme will be introduced in Gudja on June 1, much to the relief of residents who say that their parking spaces are constantly occupied by people travelling abroad from the nearby airport.

Twice as many announcements this May compared to last

On Thursday, Abela brushed aside suggestions the government is using its power of incumbency to win votes, saying “the way we have worked in the last week is the same way we have consistently worked in the last years”.

But announcements of new projects, schemes and initiatives, as well as notices of completed works, appear to have doubled in the first few weeks of this May, compared to the same period last year.