Party pundits in shouting match over political standards, green credentials

Political commentators and party affiliates came head to head in a heated debate over whether the government’s standards have plummeted of late.

“Joseph Muscat’s favourite TV shows must be [British comedies] Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister,” lawyer Andrew Borg Cardona quipped during Monday’s edition of Reporter. “He appoints a committee to conduct an inquiry, giving him enough time to analyze which way the wind is blowing, and then takes a decision accordingly.”

He referred to the Prime Minister’s delayed reactions in sacking former minister Manuel Mallia and in announcing the splitting of the ‘American University of Malta’ campus.

However, former ONE TV head of news Manuel Micallef accused the Nationalist Party of “riding the wave” of public sentiment against the government’s environmental record, arguing that the PN has “no credentials to speak about the environment”.

“The PN are not really against the university project because it could be located at Zonqor, but because it’s an investment,” Micallef insisted, drawing parallels to the party’s stances against the ‘golden passport’ scheme and the sale of a third in Enemalta to Shanghai Electric Power.

Programme host Saviour Balzan commented that the PN’s “skeletons in the closet” during their time in government come back to haunt them whenever they appear to win a political “brownie point”.

When questioned how the PN should react when faced with such comparisons to their past behaviour in government, NET TV presenter Norman Vella admitted the party must precisely change the way it had behaved in the past if it wants to regain the public’s trust.

“Simon Busuttil’s stance is that he will protect absolutely nobody who had committed a wrongdoing in the past,” he said. “However, the government is supposedly socialist and was elected on a ‘taghna lkoll’ promise and it now wants to give public land at Zonqor to a Jordanian company,” he said.  

Michael Falzon and Giovanna Debono: two weights, two measures?

While Busuttil is insisting that Muscat instantly suspend parliamentary secretary Michael Falzon over the Old Mint expropriation controversy, the Opposition leader had chosen to await the result of police investigations before taking action against former minister Giovanna Debono over the alleged Gozo ‘works-for-votes’ case. When questioned though, the PN activists denied that this was a case of the party leader applying different weights and measures.

“What could Busuttil have done with Debono, remove her as a shadow minister?” Borg Cardona questioned. “There’s a huge difference between a shadow minister and a parliamentary secretary.

Similarly, Vella argued that the only thing the PN could have done with Deoino was remove her from the party structures but not from Parliament, and pointed out that Manuel Mallia is still an MP in spite of the shooting scandal.

‘Wealth not trickling down to the people’

Vella argued that while Malta’s economy was indeed growing, it wasn’t leaving a ripple-effect amongst the people with a low income.

“The Labour Opposition had justifiably criticized Lawrence Gonzi for the exact same thing,” he recounted. “Despite the ongoing global financial crisis, Malta’s economy had improved under the previous PN administration, and yet it wasn’t trickling down to the people.

“Are people in precarious jobs, people seeking a job that offers a decent wage and university graduates feeling the effects of this added wealth?” he questioned, pointing out that Malta’s minimum wage and pensions remain relatively low.

Former editor of GWU newspaper L-orizzont Frans Ghirxi retorted that the people are indeed feeling the trickle-down effect, as the reduction in electricity and water bills has given the people a higher spending power. 

However, Vella responded that people on a low income already had an electricity voucher system in place under the previous administration.

“The government’s talk of electricity bill reductions is simply propaganda,” he said, arguing that bills have decreased because the global price of oil has collapsed by 50% in under a year, because the government sold part of Enemalta to SEP and because the BWSC power station is now far more efficient.