No one can argue the truth that annual budgets by their very nature have no other reason to be drawn up other than to provide certainty and stability for the year. That’s what budgets do.
The unrelenting sales pitch told us that Budget 2023 was “without new taxes” coupled with “stable energy prices”. We have to thank the stars above that we have a prime minister with a socialist heart, a huge country villa rented out to Russian passport buyers, a luxury yacht and nice bank account, who found us the money needed to pay for the cost of widespread corruption, of the pandemic and the war.
And he found it by borrowing a further €1 billion on the public’s contactless credit card, which now moves us towards €10 billion in the red. No fuss, however, is made of the annual cost of servicing this debt, at a probable five per cent interest per annum that translates into an extra half-a-billion euro debt more each year. Any finance expert will confirm that this is simply a deferred tax that will be extracted from the pockets of future generations.
Those of us who heard the first part of Robert Abela’s recent interview with Times of Malta will have noted his insistence that his Labour administration carries no political responsibility for the preceding seven years of Labour’s failures and corrupt deals. The slate was wiped clean, all past sins were forgotten the moment power was passed down to him by his former client in January 2020.
Yet, when confronted with today’s issues of bad government, he continually cherry picks and inflates the wrongdoings that took place decades ago and lost in history, even in times before he was born.
For example, the recent discovery of a national heritage object near the swimming pool in the private residence of one of his ministers is of no concern to either of them because it was seemingly taken before the given January 2020 cut-off date. His good governance expertise told him to simply re-appoint the minister to a different portfolio. Well done.
For him, political responsibility is no longer the test of honesty in governing. It has been replaced by the test of criminal responsibility and, as long as the attorney general keeps issuing nolle prosequis to friends of Castille, he has nothing to worry about.
The unhappy truth is that he walks on a tightrope of a dilemma. He needs an enlarged army of ‘consultants’ to keep him from falling off- Eddie Aquilina
He is full of complex contradictions. As he pilots what he describes as an unprecedented comprehensive reform bill giving “new support and protection” in favour of journalists, drafted without public consultation, his ministers launch more than 40 court appeals against journalists who have fought and won freedom of information (FOI) cases. He definitely supports journalism but only as long as it can be blackmailed financially from investigating.
The unhappy truth is that he walks on a tightrope of a dilemma. He needs an enlarged army of ‘consultants’ to keep him from falling off.
He looks to his father’s hope that he be ‘his own man’.
He is trying to repair Malta’s reputation as a serious financial jurisdiction.
He is clearly uncomfortable with the likes of Manwel Cuschieri and other Joseph fanatics. On the other hand, he fears offending the tribal sentiments of the party grassroots. It’s a repeat of Khrushchev’s trials following the death of Stalin, namely of inheriting the power from someone whose name and misdeeds must best be removed from the public memory.
When asked by Times of Malta about Joseph Muscat’s immediate super-financial gains after January 2020 as a “consultant” for Swiss companies connected to Steward’s Tumuluri payments, and for members of the MDA, he immediately shot down the suggestion of any form of revolving door legislation as being too much of a burden on taxpayers.
Imagine, he said, paying Chris Fearne to stay at home for two years before going back into private practice as surgeon. He finished his argument asserting that having such a law would encourage only fools and opportunists to take up politics.
How right he was on that one, some fools and opportunists have already arrived and handed over yet another €80 million to some hospitals operator for doing next to nothing.
But, funnily enough, he saw no problem in giving Muscat the sum of €120,000 and free use of government owned offices on the day he was thrown out of Castille and also felt no pain in Justyne Caruana getting five-figure terminal benefits, not once but twice in the span of one year.
Taxes and death are said to be the only certainties in life. Join the Labour Party and you can add easy takings as item number three to that list.