Months before the real election campaign starts, the Nationalist Party seems to have chosen the battleground on which it wants to fight its way back to power.

Or attempt to.

Over the past few weeks it has concentrated, almost solely, on the way it says consumers are being robbed by paying inflated energy bills. It has gone as far as pledging to return the money to families and businesses, if it is elected to govern the country.

The energy sector was the Labour Party’s own preferred subject before the 2013 election. Although in those particular political circumstances and the Nationalist government’s fatigue there was nothing which could have stopped the PL from taking over, Labour’s plans for the generation of electricity had then greatly contributed to its victory.

We now all know how suspicious Labour’s plot turned out to be, given the aftermath and the details that are continuously emerging in the law courts and the Public Accounts Committee. But, back in 2013, it all appeared rosy for the PL as it prepared to grab the country’s reins.

The PN has now identified a bread and butter issue, one that is affecting the people’s pockets, on which it is focusing in the hope that it could convince the electorate, in particular the floating voters, that the Labour government is “stealing” money which the PN would return to its rightful owners. Whether the PN will be persuasive enough remains to be seen. The PN does not appear today to be as strong as Labour was in the months leading up to the 2013 election.

2013

The Labour Party had presented its energy plans as soon as the 2013 election campaign had kicked off. It had placed one of its then star candidates, Konrad Mizzi, on the frontline of endless explanations on how the energy sector needed to be modernised, how it would eliminate what was then being labelled as the cancer factory in Marsaxlokk harbour and how costs for consumers would have been brought down.

A few months earlier, Labour had taken advantage of insensitive comments that had been made by Nationalist exponents on their way to vote in Parliament in favour of keeping the status quo on the utility tariffs in place at the time. That situation had deepened the cracks in the then Nationalist government, and the PL had continued to build on that by coming up with its own ideas to revolutionise the energy sector, including its promise to have a new gas-fired power station ready within two years.

As we all know, the PL had won the 2013 election handsomely and had immediately embarked to fulfil that pledge. Controversy followed on the dangers of having a massive gas tanker anchored permanently off the coast of Delimara, apart from its unsightly presence in one of the most picturesque places Malta has to offer.

But, with the benefit of hindsight, the dispute on the anchoring of the vessel in Marsaxlokk Bay was small fry compared to what was to emerge later on the energy deal itself. Right to this day, it remains a sore subject as the man accused of being a mastermind in the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia was a director of the company (Electrogas) which was entrusted to provide Malta with the first LNG-to-power facilities. His court case is running parallel with Public Accounts Committee hearings with the aim of finding out more following the revelations made in a report by the Auditor General, entitled “An investigation of matters relating to the contracts awarded to Electrogas Malta by Enemalta Corporation”.

2021

The Nationalist Party is now on its own campaign to highlight discrepancies in the way bills for energy usage are being drawn up. To be fair, the PN has been highlighting the issue for a number of years, and two years ago it had said that 80 per cent of bills it had analysed had charged customers more than they should have. But it is only in recent weeks that it has upped the tempo, possibly because the election is now getting closer, and also because its cause found an independent endorsement.

Another report by the Auditor General has brought out the fact that consumers have paid some €6.5 million more than they should have in each of the last eight years, for a total of around €50 million. The PN’s argument is that the way the energy bills are being calculated has meant that both families and businesses are being “robbed”. The PN is contesting the fact that consumers are being billed on a pro-rata basis, rather than an annual one, leading to overcharging.

While promising to return the “stolen” money back to consumers if and when elected to government, the PN upped its campaign a few weeks ago by urging people to take their energy bills to the party headquarters for them to be checked. The PN claimed that “hundreds” of people had turned up to present copies of the utility bills they received from ARMS Ltd, the company responsible for collecting what is owed in energy and water costs.

(We’re not too sure that providing personal details to a political party which was recently hacked is a good idea, but that’s another story).

These bills will provide more political ammunition to the PN as it furthers its call for the situation to be revised. So far, the PN’s demands have fallen on deaf ears.

The PL’s reaction

The Labour Party’s reaction to the PN’s campaign has not been very convincing.

It steered away from the crux of the matter, neither confirming nor denying what the PN is arguing. In the past years, the PL media machine has always been at the ready with direct responses to anything that the PN does.

But, this time, it had no counter-argument on the PN’s stand that the way the bills are being calculated is leading to overcharging. What it pointed out in a statement recently was that when it was elected to government in 2013, it had reduced energy tariffs by 25%, saying that this had led to “stable” bills which were cheaper than what they were under a PN administration.

This may be true, but the issue at stake is different. If consumers are being charged extra because of the way the bills are being computed, then the matter should be addressed and rectified. The PN is not talking about the tariffs; it’s talking about their computation. 

Class action

It is not clear whether the Nationalist Party will resort to a class action to get the law courts to rule on the situation.

Class actions are not a tradition in Malta, but we had a recent example that the PN might copy in an attempt to force the issue.

In 2009, when still in Opposition, the Labour Party had filed a law suit representing some 18,000 car owners who had paid Value Added Tax on their registration tax when they had bought a new car. The PL had argued that it was illegal under EU law to pay tax on a tax, with the PN insisting that applicants should have filed a court case on an individual basis. The situation had been resolved when, soon after winning the 2013 election, the Labour government had given a refund of the VAT paid to all individuals who had bought a car between 2004 and 2008.

The boot is now on the PN’s foot as the party seeks to have a remedy to the overcharging claims. A court case instituted by two private individuals has been going on for more than two years, and perhaps the PN is waiting for its outcome to make up its mind on how to proceed.

What is clear is that it is pledging to refund the money it says is being overcharged if it is elected to government.

Difference

What the PN is doing is making a promise similar to the one the Labour Party had made in 2009 on the payment of VAT on car registration tax. It hopes that this populist move could earn it some support.

There is one fundamental difference from the situation we had 12 years ago. That time, the PN was already in a state of collapse which was to become more apparent in the years that followed and more so after the 2013 electoral defeat. On the other hand, the PL was gaining in popularity and the class action only served to increase its advantage.

The Labour Party in government is nowhere near the condition the PN administration was in 12 years ago. Polls continue to show that the PL still leads with a considerable margin, with the PN trailing heavily.

So while, on the one hand, the PN may be fighting for a just cause, it does not appear likely that any action it takes or promises it makes will sway the balance in its favour.