Back in 1987, a tired Labour government faced disaster at the polls. It had been in office when it should have been out, had presided over a country where choices were inflicted on the people and chocoholics had to cross over to Sicily to get decent chocolate. The intervening years had seen countless examples of thugs on the streets, with dangers to democracy being the order of the day, and there had been, of course, that awful battle for the survival of Church schools.

There was a new head of government, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, who had neither the fire nor the impudent arrogance of Dom Mintoff. But KMB, as he was and is still known, was patient, hard working and persistent.

Anyway, in the run-up to the 1987 May election, he took extraordinary pains to remove any kind of antagonistic behaviour or policies. And, more importantly, he made it a point to make sure the government delivered on the expectations of people, including and especially on such matters as jobs and housing.

The result? The result was he still lost the election but by a very slim margin, rather than by a landslide. It just makes you think.

It also makes one remember a similar situation back in 1971 when an equally tired Nationalist administration, facing a strong and vibrant Dom Mintoff, made safe by renewed good relations with the Church, pulled out all the stops in an effort to stop from going under.

One can still remember George Borg Olivier’s quip that a certain minister (still living) had given jobs to all in Zejtun, except for St Catherine.

In the end, even he lost the election, but by the very slim margin of three votes in a crucial district.

There are two contradictory lessons to be learnt from this: either that those who promise and give out as many handouts as they can still lose the election. Or perhaps had it not been for those three votes or so in Qormi, and had the 1987 May election been held, say, a month later, the course of Maltese history may well have had a different outcome.

It seems the present administration is following the latter advice. It may also be fortified by what happened in the six weeks between the EU referendum and the 2003 April election where by hook or by crook those PN supporters who had not voted for EU accession were “persuaded” to get out and vote.

Of course, things are different now. There are no thugs on the streets, and instead of a dearth of things on sale, we now have a surfeit. There is no battle with the Church. And those 1,700 whose temporary jobs with the government have now been made permanent were working for the government just the same, unlike the 7,000 who were pulled off the streets and sent to Malta Shipbuilding.

However, this is Malta and this is election year. Whatever advances our country has made, we still can’t seem to have an election year without breaking all rules of prudence and fiscal responsibility.

One had hoped that having endured the hard slog to finally achieve euro accession, we would have learnt how easy it is to fall from fiscal grace into deficit hell and how difficult it is to climb back. But then we have seen how the present, fiscally-prudent government came up with what we called “a Socialist budget” and how, not content with that, it is continuing to come up with goodies from under the bench, including giving 1,700 permanent jobs instead of the temporary ones they had.

And it’s no consolation that the Labour Party is, if anything, even more fiscally irresponsible with its key commitments of no tax on overtime, take all the feasts as they come, pay half the surcharge.

Whoever wins the election will have a very hard time persuading the electorate that the economic situation is not as rosy as pictured, that sacrifices must be made and that taxes so far held back because of the election will have to be brought in. If people are going to vote for the party they perceive will give them more, they had better think again.

“Malta’s fiscal sustainability is by no means assured,” warns Willem Buiter, a professor at London School of Economics and a former member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee.

One would have thought our country has matured enough for the party that promises real growth, which is sustainable and achievable, to be chosen, but it seems that people look like they’re still dazzled by what glitters, at least this side of the polls.

Why else, when we have full employment, do the parties still promise jobs and promotions as if there’s no tomorrow? Why do we not have parties who talk straight about the huge amount of social fraud there is and commit themselves to tackle it? Why are we not hearing anything about cutting down on the size of government and rolling back the State? Or about how the State becoming less intrusive with less controls, less red tape, less bureaucratic snarl-ups? Or making hiring and firing simpler and easier?

The Nationalist government used to complain that the KMB approach before the 1987 election led to the high deficit 1990s. Whether that was true or not, it does seem as if the coming years and whoever will be in government will rue the present administration for promising too much and thus endangering the gains made by years of hard slogging pre-euro accession.