I missed out on the election campaign’s first week and I think I was lucky.

It does seem that all that eagerness to blow the election bugle, so yearned for over the past year as JPO and Franco Debono pushed the PN government to the brink but then desisted, was in reality an over-eagerness to unleash what seems to have been the norm this past week – skirmishes all around, debates taking over all the airwaves and the main television channels.

One week down, many people I have met since I returned from Dublin have spoken to me how just one week of the campaign has disgusted them, how a very different Malta has come out of the woods and how it seems that worse is still to come.

Other countries are also holding their elections – Italy first of all, and although the situation is pretty bleak, there is no wall-to-wall election coverage on television. Nor is there this eyeball-to-eyeball approach, this confrontation between two behemoths with no possible solution except the victory of either one or the other.

I am told there have been shouting matches in most ‘election debates’ that are taking place in all the media and many of the discussions seem to be moderated (if that’s the word) by people who are either beholden to one or other party or who otherwise lack the authority to impose rules of behaviour on the participants. Labour has hit the ground running with its proposals for the reduction of energy costs.

Over the past months, I had expressed scepticism on this proposal. I still cannot see why PL has chosen to latch on to this proposal as their election visiting card.

Let us assume, though some dispute this, that energy prices in Malta are the highest in Europe. Why is it then that reducing energy prices has never featured among the main requests of the Maltese electorate, in survey after survey that have been made?

Of course, if one party were to promise to bring these prices down, it would find immediate approval by most voters. Who wouldn’t?

All through the past months, I had thought that a PL government would tackle the issue from the first weeks in power and through a price reduction order and I am reassured to find now that this will not happen.

Instead, we are now told of a whole plan that will require anything like four years to deliver.

I do not think this proposal will draw voters to support the PL and I cannot see how people below the poverty line are being told to wait for at least two years until they see a reduction of costs. Will this make voters switch to PL?

I agree, and have been saying this for many years now, that Enemalta is a mess and that no one seems to have been really trying to get it to mend its ways.

But from what I can gather, I am still to be persuaded that what PL is proposing is a better alternative. There are just too many strands in the proposal and each bit has laid PL open to snide interpretations and innuendos to the great joy of cartoon creators of which Malta is seeing a sudden explosion.

A proposal should be one that is easy to understand but this one has all the features of one that is too clever for its own good. A government in waiting could probably have attained the same political result with the general commitment to do all in its power to bring down energy prices instead of this proposal with so many hidden traps with (forgive me if I do not remember them all) a PPP, an agreement that does not have to be on tender, a Mepa permit that may not be needed. And so on and so forth.

Again, a reduction of energy prices may be desirable, and bringing Enemalta to a better level of efficiency even more so. Nevertheless, not all savings so made should be passed on to the consumer for Enemalta itself still has debts dating to the first Delimara plant which must be paid back.

There has been, from what I can gather, more heat than light shed on this proposal, both from the Tonio Fenech onslaught and from the Konrad Mizzi replies. This has become a tsunami of arguments and counter-arguments and, from what I gather, people are not understanding anything. So those in favour of PL will vote in favour anyway, those against will vote against anyway. I have yet to hear of anyone deciding to switch votes on the strength of this proposal.

To be fair, the questions raised with regard to this proposal outweigh by far the timid approvals I have seen. Many of the latter come from people who have long been part of the PL plank, while others may have their axe to grind against a government which, as they see it, may have defrauded them of a deal they thought they had made.

Many others who have at some point or other spoken against the BWSC heavy fuel oil plant have not come out in favour of this PL proposal. One should, perhaps, ask them where they stand. What does Prof. Edward Mallia think – he who has argued so forcefully against the BWSC and in favour of gas?

Nor do I know at what contractual stage the proposals for an interconnector with Sicily are and whether this will be affected by the PL proposal. One costs €200 million and the other €300 million. Have we suddenly become so rich we can afford them both?

So this is what PL has been harbouring for so many months and why they have become so smug about the election. They assumed, it would seem, that this proposal would carry the country once it was suggested and this proposal did away with all the hard work that preparing an election campaign involves. It is a sure fire proposal with instant gratification. That, to me, shows a sloppy mind and a lazy approach to government and there I was, blaming this administration for being shallow and sloppy-minded. The PL is even worse.

There is simply no easy way to electoral victory, no shortcut to the arduous job of getting through to people and addressing their real needs.

I have just been to Dublin and have seen at close quarters the country’s ministers who made themselves quite available to us. I compared them to our local bunch (and also to their would-be alternatives) and I found the Irish to be down-to-earth with no fancy approaches, no pie in the sky proposals, no magic solutions but damn hard work keeping the welfare of the people all the time at the forefront of their considerations. And even so, even after their election tsunami, there is still a lot of anger and hurt in the country.

I have said this over and over again: to go for a reduction of energy prices means to illude the country there is no need for austerity, for checking consumption, for adopting a less wasteful lifestyle.

All the eagerness PL had to come out with this proposal from Day 1 of the campaign should have led it to present the idea better to the public. Instead, I have read jumbled accounts in the media, which show me (I hope I am not wrong) there were no point-by-point presentations, no FAAs, no file or presentation that can be consulted and checked. If there are, I would be grateful if someone would point them out.

I was surprised when it was announced this would be the very first of PL statements. I would have thought PL stood to gain far more from an impassioned analysis of PN in government and what this country has had to go through. The energy proposal could have waited until later in the campaign.

By messing it up so much in the first week of the campaign, PL has lost much of the initial advantage it stood to gain. Maybe it can still see its way to turn matters in the next weeks of the campaign.

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