It used to be said that a sage politician always under-promises so that he can later over-deliver.
It would seem that our politicians, specifically in this case Alfred Sant, have never heard of this maxim or have just decided to try and prove to be its exception.
For Monday’s speech in reply to the Budget did not just contain, as one would have expected, a criticism of the 2008 Budget, but insisted all the time that “a future Labour government led by me” (echoes of a similar phrase that used to be repeated by Eddie Fenech Adami, though that referred to the past, not the future) would do this, that and the other.
Here find a potted list of what Dr Sant promised last Monday:
• measures to increase the manufacturing workforce by 2,000 (or 4,000, it is not clear)
• Support for investors in IT
• Assistance to hotels
• Promotion of the South
• Cut-back in taxation
• More low-cost airlines
• Strengthen Air Malta
• Two golf courses in Malta and one in Gozo
• New yacht marinas
• Reduced taxation of self-employed
• Assistance to farmers and fishermen
• Boost tourism to Gozo
• Subsidy for helicopter service
• Two projects for each local council
• No tax on overtime work
• More spending on family policies
• Children’s allowance to all, restored to what it was
• Weekend public holidays restored
• More medicines for the elderly
• Elderly in homes to pay 65, not 85 per cent of their earnings
• Full Service pensions
• Power surcharge to be halved
• Price freeze to stay for a further two months
• Remove VAT from education
• Increase per capita spend on education.
We may have missed out on some other proposals. It goes without saying that all this and more is not just good but highly welcome by all, especially those who have felt most keenly the past years’ squeeze.
But that’s not the point. The point is: who will pay for all this? Where will a Labour administration get the money to be able to do all this?
Dr Sant would reply he would get it from seeing there are no cost over-runs and waste of public money. That’s easier said than done, as we will all come to know. Remember: to make a commitment regarding spending is one thing, and it usually ends up higher than expected, while to estimate how much money one will save by just one single draconian measure is very very risky, as every family knows. What’s good for our families is also good for the whole country. It is very foolish to promise a spending spree without saying where the money will be coming from, as long as it will not be coming from more taxation.
Last week, this paper came hard down on the Budget proposals and called it a Socialist Budget for it includes proposals that may well imperil and risk the country’s finances. To hear the Prime Minister, speaking on Wednesday, call his Budget a “prudent” one was a bit rich but then, if this is a “prudent” Budget – and it is not – then Dr Sant’s commitments are nothing short of reckless. All Dr Gonzi had to do on Wednesday was to list all Dr Sant’s pledges, pin a price-tag on them and then estimate how much money each household will be contributing to help the Sant government implement its commitments.
For all the pre-election “sturm und drang’ and increased adrenalin, it would be the sweetest irony for Labour to win the coming election and then have to face up to paying for what it has recklessly promised. It will simply not work and Dr Gonzi was at least right in this when he said Dr Sant would drive the economy into the wall.
This does not mean that there is not a lot to be said about cutting down waste, tackling cost over-runs, forgetting some white elephant dreams and getting the country to grow – and to grow faster. Nor should one forget (as, in fact, both parties seem to have done) to tackle the widespread abuse of social assistance, as the article on this page so very correctly argues.
But as long as our political parties see fit to wage elections on the basis of who will give out the most, we will still suffer the pangs and the traumas that formed part of our remote and immediate past. We have still not learnt the lessons.