People want to see “real” change in the way the country is run and Labour risks losing the next general election if that does not happen, Clyde Caruana believes.

“People have made their voice very clear,” the finance minister said of the MEP election result. “There has to be real change.” 

Labour won the June 8 election but was left reeling after it lost over 33,000 votes since the 2019 elections. In a Times of Malta interview, Caruana said he thinks the party is still in time to change course and win back voters.

However, he also sees historical parallels which will cause party insiders sleepless nights. In both 1981 and 1996, governments led by Dom Mintoff and Eddie Fenech Adami, which brought about systemic economic overhauls, ended up losing the popular vote, he notes.  “People always vote for something better,” he mused. And that something better is “not just money”.

In a wide-ranging interview, Caruana spoke about his worry that infrastructural pressures have yet to be adequately addressed, the challenge of shifting economic gears to higher-value outputs and his matter-of-fact assessment of Malta’s economy being dominated by cartels.

He is convinced that locals are fast losing patience with living in an overcrowded country, and notes that his warning about Malta’s skyrocketing population still stands.

“I said that we will be 800,000 people by 2040. If the current trends continue we will already be at 600,000 by the end of this legislature,” he says.  For all the talk of improving quality of life, the money still needs to flow, however: Caruana is clear that Malta’s GDP must continue to grow at the annual 4% rate it has registered in the past years if the country is to avoid fiscal problems.

What needs to change is how that 4% growth is created, he says, citing the example of the Netherlands – a country where people work fewer hours per week than in Malta but earn significantly more.

“We need to do more with less,” he acknowledges. “And I think we need to triple the effort to move in that direction.”

Whether his colleagues in government share his sense of urgency remains moot, however.

Caruana has spent years calling out the construction sector’s excessively tight grip on politics, and he thinks voters see it that way, too.  But little appears to have changed.

No interest in taking on Labour PL deputy leader role

“I say what I have to say. Then it’s up to the rest to accept what I say or otherwise,” he says.

Caruana is less concerned about an EU decision to begin excessive deficit procedures against Malta. There will be no tax increases or austerity measures, he says, provided the country continues to cut 0.5% off its deficit every year.

He briskly cuts off questions about the possibility of Malta missing that target. “It’s my job to make sure that moment does not happen,” he says – and is equally firm about insisting he has no interest in serving as Labour deputy leader or EU Commissioner.

That assertiveness is conspicuous by its absence when Caruana is asked if he harbours the ambition to serve as prime minister one day.

“The prime minister is Robert Abela,” he says. But, as he adds when pressed, “a week is a long time in politics”.