This election will long be remembered for its focus on energy. One week after PL came out with their plan to reduce energy bills, the air has been filled with claim and counter-claim, with proposal and denigration of proposal.

Ordinary people just do not have the technical ability to digest and absorb, to weigh and measure the implications of the PL proposal nor of the rebuttal by PN. In the absence of such expertise, most of us just suspend judgement and go along with the spin: if they support Labour, they support the PL plan, if they support PN they pooh-pooh the PL plan.

It is true that some people with perceived expertise have expressed themselves and as it were crossed over party lines, such as Jesmond Mugliett or the PN-appointed former Enemalta Chairman but they are not the really-independent impartial observers the country needs to hear from.

Nor are the likes of Malta Employers Association. As for the Malta Developers Association, words fail us. The only expert who has often spoken out in the past in favour of the gas option as against the BWSC plant is Professor Edward Mallia and he has been hard put these past days to disassociate himself from the PL spin which would have implicated him as being in favour of the their plan, which he then made clear he is not.

So that leaves us, the general public that is, up the creek and without a paddle. PL’s decision to come up with such a proposal must be unique in the history of politics for it is very rare for a party (incidentally far ahead in the polls) to come up with such a specific proposal instead of a general proposal.

This is a complex proposal which is based on so many unknown factors and which at the same time must all come together to be able to succeed. Any slight deviation from the plan could skew the entire viability.

Even so, it is difficult, not to say impossible to believe that a private investor would be willing to enter a 10-year contract and keep prices down. And, we ask, what happens after 10 years? Will the private partner then push up prices to make up for the foregone profits? Will Malta end up without its own power station after 10 years, if it has to part company with this private partner? There may be other questions one can ask.

One accepts the logic behind the PL proposal to make energy prices cheaper in a concrete and factual manner. That is far more credible than the usual wooly promise we have come to expect. But it did not need to become the kind of plan PL have come out with. Whether it satisfies people is a moot point. As anyone knows, there are many variables in every family’s budget and finances and reducing the cost of energy, while important in itself, is not the be-all and end-all of everything. The availability of jobs, for instance, is far more important and it is not at all ensured by this PL plan. So too, training and education to help one’s children move upwards the ladder of society.

The PL plan also has the characteristic that it is a simple expedient that by itself, claims to be able to change everything. If only things were so simple! Let’s assume that energy prices are brought down and that people will thus have more money to spend. The reality of our small and open economy is that more money to spend will become more consumer spending, which will mean more importation of consumer goods; and thus more money flowing outside the country. The only growth to see will be the growth of the import bill.

Finally, by focusing on this proposal in the first days of the campaign, PL has risked undermining the rest of its electoral appeal. If things were so simple that energy prices would be brought down and we would all have more money to spend, nothing more needs to be said. We’d just do it and be rich for the rest of our lives (or at least for the coming 10 years).