With the nomination of Tonio Borg as Malta’s European commissioner now out of the way, the government and the Nationalist Party can concentrate on two other important issues in the coming days.

On Wednesday, the government will be presenting its budget for next year and, two days later, PN delegates will be voting for the party’s next deputy leader, who will be replacing Dr Borg.

They are two different issues altogether, with one common factor – that Tonio Fenech will be the protagonist in both situations, the first as Finance Minister, and in the second instance as one of the contenders, together with Simon Busuttil, for the post of second in command in the PN.

As was to be expected, yesterday’s newspapers included several stories on both the budget and the contest for deputy leadership. And the media will have a field day in the coming days when matters develop.

What is certain is that the government will – no matter what it says – use the budget as an electoral tool. And this is where the Opposition has jumped the gun when it said that it will be voting against the budget, come what may. If, as is being said, the government will fulfil its promise to reduce income tax, will the Opposition have the courage to vote against such a measure when it knows that it will go a long way to ease the financial burden on many families, that same financial burden that the Opposition has been vociferous about in more than one occasion?

The Labour Party counters this by saying that it will retain what is good in the budget, but then will still vote against it. It is rather a contradictory position, and may stem for another possibility that the PL is seeing that there could be embarrassment for the Nationalist Party if other MPs who said they will vote against the budget maintain their promise.

But, again, a position against the budget if this budget will ease the tax burden could backfire against the Labour Party, and whoever votes against it. It would be perceived that Labour is against having people paying less taxes.

We will know more on Wednesday. And we will know more about the PN deputy leadership race by the end of the week when the voting takes place on Friday, and then possibly on Saturday too if no candidate obtains two-thirds of the votes at the first count. Here, the contest seems to be wide open between two candidates of the same generation who respect each other’s work, and who respect each other too.