,With a few days to go before the government presents its last budget before the legislature comes to an end, Malta Labour Party leader Alfred Sant has come up with a challenge for the government.

The Nationalists are boasting that the country is on the right track, that its finances are on a sound footing and that a lot of wealth has been generated over the past months, Dr Sant told party faithful last Sunday in Ta’ Xbiex.

If this is so, then workers should get at least a Lm1.50 weekly increase, the water and electricity surcharge should be reduced by half, the departure tax should be removed, the vehicle registration tax should be revised, while the financial burdens on elderly people at St Vincent de Paul should be removed, he went on to add.Now, that’s quite a tall order.

Dr Sant knows that the government will not get anywhere near fulfilling all his wishes. There will be a wage rise, probably in the region Dr Sant is suggesting, but it is hard to imagine that the other proposals will be acceded to – all, and in the way Dr Sant has proposed.

For one thing, the Nationalist Party has already challenged Dr Sant over and over again, to say how the Labour Party intends to make up for the halving of the water and electricity surcharge, a promise Dr Sant said an MLP government would implement days after taking over the country’s administration. So, it is highly unlikely that this suggestion will be accepted.

But Dr Sant has nothing to lose in making these and other proposals, if he so wishes. He has everything to gain by raising expectations sky-high, and then, when the government is obviously unable to implement all his recommendations because, after all, they are unsustainable, he will be the first to criticise and describe the budget as weak or unfulfilling.

It is the kind of political game that we have grown accustomed to. The MLP is realising that the advantage that it had over the Nationalist Party in the first years of the legislature – an advantage that was built because, among other things, of a difficult economic period that pushed the government into taking unpopular decisions – is slowly being whittled down.

The MLP knows that it cannot rely on the victories it registered in local council elections to have a good measure of what the electorate is thinking. Over the past months the country has turned the corner and is no longer in difficulty. The Nationalist Party’s plans for the country’s future – the so-called Vision 2015 – seems to have struck a chord, much more than Labour’s publication of a long list of plans.

So, what the MLP is doing is telling the people to expect more and more – the impossible really–, and when this does not arrive it will say that the country is not in the position the government says it is, and that therefore a vote for the MLP will be a better option.

This is how the challenge made by Dr Sant last Sunday can be interpreted. He told the people that once all is fine, nothing should stop the government from handing out the goodies.

What Dr Sant failed to say however, is that the country has, yes, overcome a few hurdles over the past years, but that there is still a long way to go. Dr Sant knows that the government cannot implement his proposals because this would throw the country’s finances to the dogs.