Did Malta strike oil while no-one was looking?

Something must have happened for both main parties to be promising to dole out more and more money to all and sundry. Ever since Robert Abela finally called it and confirmed that there would be an early election after all on 30 May, he and Alex Borg have been tripping over themselves to promise a variety of cash grants and freebies.

It’s become laughingly (but also disturbingly) predictable that an imminent election suddenly puts a rocket under the government’s backside and issues which have been a major bone of contention for a number of years become do-able after all.

Since the campaign officially started last Monday (with election banners and billboards magically appearing overnight from sea to shining sea) the proposals have been emerging faster than you can say “anything you can do, I can do better”.

The announcement that the PL will grant extended maternity (6 months) and paternal leave (one month) for which many parents have long been clamouring is a positive step; previous to this back in January 2025, the PN had promised a year’s paid parental leave which can be shared between the parents. There is only one small snag, has anyone consulted with employers, especially small to medium-sized businesses, on how they would replace parents who do not come to work for 6 months or more? Has either party come up with solutions for that particular predicament or are they both just promising anything and everything without thinking it through?

Another Labour proposal is that pensioners would be guaranteed an increase of €50 per week over the next five years, including annual cost of living adjustments. Students have been promised a further 15% increase on their stipend. Promptly on cue, much like two bidders at an antique auction, a future PN government has promised a 25% raise in student stipends, while those students in healthcare professions would receive the equivalent to a minimum wage.

Meanwhile, the third party, Momentum has proposed to raise Malta’s minimum wage by over 60%, explaining that the current minimum wage of €221.78 per week falls short of what any person needs to live decently. While this is undeniably true, it was not explained how employers are expected to make up for this increase to their payroll without prices for their goods and services not going through the roof, making them prohibitively expensive.

Obviously, promising people more money in their pocket is not to be sneezed at, and no one is going to refuse an increase, but the perennial question remains, where is all this dosh coming from? The other point to mention is that, no matter who promises what, I very much doubt this will make people change their voting allegiances. We have too many “Laburisti/Nazzjonalisti sal-mewt” (Labour/Nationalist until I die) especially among those who have been indoctrinated to love their party, come what may, since birth. They will simply shrug, be happy to pocket the increase and vote the same way they have always done.

The promises have not stopped there. In another announcement, the Nationalist Party is proposing free physical and mental health screening for all workers. It has also proposed a €300 grant for smartwatches aimed at young people aged between 15 and 25, as part of a new initiative called Fit4Life.

Through Sport Malta, the PL said that it would begin offering free swimming lessons for all children between the ages of three and five.  The existing free gym membership scheme for young people to people of all ages with illnesses such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
The PL have also proposed that foot passengers will be allowed to travel on the Gozo ferry for free. There will also be a €5000 bonus for the birth of every child.
I’ve probably missed a few of the freebies mentioned and I’m sure more will be announced during the respective 1 May mass meetings which took place on Friday. But, you get the gist. It’s Christmas, Easter and your birthday all rolled into one.
In a striking visual which could be a subliminal message that “this is where we belong”, the Labour Party chose to hold its first rally in front of Castille, which provided a magnificent backdrop. However, having the PM (who was there in his role as Leader of the Labour Party) emerge from the front door of Castille was not perhaps the wisest of moves. Also providing a telling backdrop behind the speakers were carefully chosen, well-groomed young people signalling the PL’s determination to keep projecting a youthful image.
Equally focussing on the youth vote was the Nationalist Party which held its meeting in Lija with the usual party anthems as they revved up the crowd. Being in the opposition for so long and with the gap between the two parties still putting them at a disadvantage, they have a much harder mountain to climb, of course. But a lot can happen in a month and Alex Borg might even manage to convince enough people “to take the chance to win again”.
To do that, however, he needs to start giving concrete solutions and explain how he will achieve all the things he is promising; it’s not enough to say he will build five new hospitals, for example, which sound nice enough on paper. The magic questions are: how much will all this cost the taxpayer and how long will it take?

Rather than all these extravagant, almost unfeasible, promises, maybe both leaders should come up with a long term vision for the country which does not have to wait for the eve of an election campaign but is implemented as a matter of course during their term of office. After all, that is their job. 

It’s raining…men

Also this week, the Momentum party unveiled its list of candidates and immediately received flak because they are all men.
I’m not too sure this criticism is justified, first because three of its executive committee are women and secondly because the reason for the lack of female candidates is the same in each election. Let’s face it, many women do not have adequate back up support at home which will allow them to juggle running a household, raising children and probably a full-time or part-time job, on top of running an election campaign. Put simply, what every female political candidate needs is a “wife”.
The imbalance between the sexes also cannot be rectified just by throwing a couple of women in the mix in the belief that they will automatically be elected through the infamous gender corrective mechanism, because that only comes into effect if the elected candidates from the two main parties include less than 40% of either gender. God forbid that a third party is given an equal playing field.
Having said that, I am still personally not in favour of this mechanism because a woman should be elected fair and square on her own merit, not through this contrived system. In 2022, 12 women were co-opted through this method and I did not see them shattering any glass ceilings, nor have I seen them doing anything particularly earth shattering in favour of women’s rights. We’ve seen brilliant high-flying women being elected on their own steam, and we’ve seen lacklustre mediocre women who were just plonked there, whose names I can barely remember.
Whether our politicians are men or women, I would rather see them obtaining their parliamentary seats because voters actually took the trouble to leave home and vote them in, rather than candidates being given handouts to pretend we have achieved some kind of gender equality.