Over two-thirds of the Maltese do not believe that the Prime Minister Joseph Muscat or Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi should resign after confirming that the construction of a new power station will miss its original March deadline by over a year, a survey shows.
The 300 respondents in the December edition of the iSurvey were asked whether either politician should resign after Dr Mizzi confirmed that the power station should only be ready by June 2016.
The construction of a new, gas-fired power station by the private sector in just two years was a key part of the Labour Party’s plan to reduce electricity bills, and both Dr Muscat and Dr Mizzi had defended their ambitious deadline in the face of scepticism before last year’s general election.
But while electricity rates are being reduced as scheduled – domestic rates were reduced last March, and commercial rates should be reduced next March – work on the power station had clearly fallen behind before Dr Mizzi came clean about the missed deadline earlier this month.
Both Dr Muscat and Dr Mizzi had promised to resign if their energy plan failed, but they have since clarified that they would only have resigned if bills were not lowered as scheduled.
As it turns out, a significant minority believes that at least one of them should resign, but according to the iSurvey, 71.3% believe that the issue is not a resignation matter.
As for the rest, 16.7% believe that both Dr Muscat and Dr Mizzi should go. A further 4.7% believe that Dr Mizzi should tender his resignation, while 7.3% believe that the Prime Minister should step down instead.
Unsurprisingly, the verdict of those who voted for the Labour Party in the last general election is vastly different to that of Nationalist Party voters.
Most PN voters – 58.9% of them – believe that at least one of the two men should resign, and they are more likely to suggest that Dr Muscat should. While 30.9% insisted that both should step down, 22.1% said that Dr Muscat alone should leave, while only 5.9% think that Dr Mizzi should take the blame whilst sparing the Prime Minister.
On the other hand, 87.3% of Labour voters believe that no one should take the fall over the missed deadline, and those who think otherwise are slightly more likely to pin the blame on Dr Mizzi.
While 7.5% of Labour voters believe that both the Prime Minister and Dr Mizzi should resign, 2.2% believe that only the Prime Minister should, whereas 3% maintained that the energy minister should step down.
Men were somewhat more likely than women to call for someone’s resignation: as 31.9% of them did, compared to 25.9% of female respondents.
When age groups are taken into consideration, the least forgiving are those aged 25-34, of whom 43.6% believed that a resignation or two was in order. On the other hand, less than a quarter of people aged 45 and up – 22.7% of people aged 45-59 and 24.7% of those aged 60 and up – believed the same.