The reactions from both political parties to this week’s downgrading by the Standard and Poor’s credit ratings agency were at once both standard and poor.

Just after the agency downgraded Malta’s credit rating on Wednesday, an immediate blame game ensued between the Nationalist and Labour parties, each blaming each other for the state of affairs.

But, truth be told, both were right, and both were wrong.

The agency had singled out two main determining factors in its decision: a) that the country’s budget for 2013 has not been approved and that as such Malta will not have a budget in force until at least March; and b) that public debt has risen and is at risk of rising further.

Obviously, the Labour Party has latched on to the latter finding, repeatedly saying ‘I told you so’ it is not altogether wrong in doing so, and the Nationalist Party has, of all things, blamed the Opposition for not voting in favour of the budget.

There is some weight to the PN’s argument that there could have been other ways for the Opposition to have voiced its displeasure with the government – not voting in favour of the budgets of particular ministries or requesting a cut in ministers’ pay. But tradition has it that an Opposition party never votes for a government’s budget.

And even though the Opposition had said it would implement the budget as presented, with the exception of the thorny issue of taxation on minimum wage earners, the government could not have really expected the Opposition to approve its budget. 

Yes, in Italy that had happened recently and Finance Minister Tonio Fenech, in an interview with this newspaper just before the budget was presented, had called on the Opposition to support the budget, but the government must have known that the suggestion stood a snowball’s chance down below of being taken on board.

But for the government to blame the downgrading on the Opposition’s failure to approve the budget is downright ridiculous, and the only thing the PN can well and truly pin the blame on is its own inability to deal with its former wayward backbencher Franco Debono, who had been saying for months that he would not support the government’s budget. And the fact of the matter, according to Dr Debono, is that there had not been a single reconciliation approach from the party in the weeks leading up to the budget.

As such, if the party wants to lay the blame for the downgrading on the lack of a budget, it has no one to blame but itself and its complete failure to bring its entire parliamentary group, no matter how difficult some elements may have been, in line.

And the lack of a budget, according to the credit statement, was the predominant factor in the downgrade, let us make no bones about it. The structure of the credit statement is very clear when it lists this as its primary concern.

The dissolution of Malta’s Parliament on 7 January, S&P said quite clearly as its first point, will prevent a 2013 budget from being adopted until after the election set for 9 March, “thus raising questions about the government’s ability to restore the fiscal flexibility it has gradually lost, and resolving the recurrent budgetary risks caused by loss-making state-owned enterprises”.

The Opposition, meanwhile, is correct to state that public debt is to blame, but only partly so and in all fairness if one were to examine the public debts of Malta’s EU peers, it transpires that Malta does not stand alone by any stretch of the imagination.

The country’s high government debt burden, estimated at 75 per cent of GDP in 2013 was, of course also to blame. But the agency also stressed the fact that “a significant proportion of entitlement spending, some 27 per cent of total expenditure between January and November 2012 was on social security benefits” – and a Socialist party really should not be griping about spending too much on social support.

But cherry picking the negatives from the statement does no one any good.  There were also a number of positives in the statement.  The Maltese economy, S&P said, “has displayed resilience against a poor external environment, despite its openness and significant financial services activity. Net exports of goods and services turned positive in 2010 and have contributed to growth throughout the crisis.

“The stable outlook balances our view of Malta’s relatively wealthy and diversified economy against risks stemming from a narrow economic base, slowly adjusting public finances, and an uncertain growth outlook.”

And despite having branded Enemalta an “ailing energy utility”, it also said that recent progress on Enemalta’s restructuring could reduce the amount of government guarantees and reduce the overall stock of contingent liabilities”.

And, as for the fact that S&P has forecast that Enemalta “will remain loss-making over the foreseeable future”, the statement pointed out that “support for Enemalta and other public-sector entities had led to general government debt increasing at a rate above the government’s reported budgetary deficit since 2009”. 

And the government has been supporting Enemalta because it has been subsidising energy bills so as to keep them as low as possible, at least until the interconnector project comes on line – something that, again, the Opposition party should certainly agree with. 

That vote for Budget 2013 that brought the government down and catalysed this early election that we are facing had actually presented an ideal opportunity for the Opposition, if only it had been patient enough to play the long game. 

The Opposition perhaps missed the boat on this one: it could have made a grand gesture and voted in favour of the budget in the national interest, which would have earned it a great many points from the electorate. But it didn’t choose that path.

The electorate would like to see some grand gestures from the people it will be tasked with electing in March, but so far instead of grand gestures all we are seeing are petty pot shots.