Is the Maltese electorate so gullible that voters are unable to see that what passes for an election campaign, now being cemented by “election programmes” or manifestos, has turned into little more than a Dutch auction? Is the prize of getting into Castille really to go to the highest bidder, regardless of economic consequences?

George Bernard Shaw once asked a female acquaintance on a cruise ship: “Will you sleep with me for £10,000?” and received an answer in the affirmative. When he followed up by asking: “Would you sleep with me for £10”, the lady took considerable umbrage, demanding furiously: “What do you think I am?” “That” replied the playwright, “has already been established. Now we are merely negotiating the price.” The Maltese general election has reached the same point.

Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. The longer this election goes on, the more convinced I am that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. The unsavoury bidding war between the parties over computer tablets is but the most comical manifestation of this.

We have been regaled with promises of swingeing cuts to our utility rates and the building of a new power station costing a few hundred million euros. Gozo has been promised a tunnel, tax holidays for new businesses, money for upgrading farmhouses and the building of an indoor public pool. One party will offer free child-care for all, while the other will offer €5 million in vouchers for the provision of private child-care. University students’ stipends will start benefiting from pro-rata cost of living adjustments and other increases to stipends for special categories will be made. The free medicines scheme will be expanded. Generous tax concessions for all are being bandied about by both parties. 

And so it goes on. The two major parties continue to woo the voter with more and more promises they are unlikely to be able to keep. Like Greeks bearing gifts to Troy over two thousand years ago, should we put our trust in them? (“Do not trust the horse, Trojans. Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts”).

Yet not 500 miles to our east lies modern Greece, a stark and awful reminder of what happens to a country when politicians make promises that take no account of economic reality. Greece, with unemployment standing today at 26 per cent of its workforce and which has suffered from a steep annual reduction in its national wealth (gross domestic product) for the last six years, abandoned fiscal discipline well over a decade ago as successive Greek governments sought to “buy” the votes of their electors in order to gain or remain in power. To win at the polls, each political party had to out-perform its rival in the number of state jobs and free state services, other patronage and financial benefits it could offer.

Sounds familiar? While Malta’s economic situation is nowhere near that of Greece, and the level of bribery to buy votes has not (yet) reached Greek levels, there are undoubted signs that both the Nationalist governing party and the Labour opposition are not averse to taking a leaf out of their Mediterranean cousins’ book. The Greek lesson should cause the Maltese electorate to pause and ask some probing questions, not only about the affordability of the promises being made, but also, more importantly, about the areas of the Maltese economy not being mentioned.

Both parties are deceiving the electorate. Worse, both are conniving in that deceit. The reality is that, as two leading international credit agencies and the European Commission – none of which have any political axe to grind in Malta – have warned, Malta is facing difficult economic challenges ahead unless timely action is taken to correct current economic trends.

Malta has received clear warnings that its burgeoning public debt risks bringing down the economy – as has happened in Greece, Cyprus and elsewhere. Unless it takes urgent action to control it, Malta will not be immune to the consequences. This alone should set alarm bells ringing when the costs of the promises being made by the politicians are weighed in the scales. Those promises can only be met by making economies elsewhere in the budget, or by raising taxes. To place one’s faith in economic growth on its own at a time when Europe, Malta’s main trading partner, is struggling to get out of recession, is simply unrealistic.

Similar warnings have been sounded about Malta’s rapidly ageing population and the unaffordability of its pension and welfare schemes. Again, both parties have set their faces against confronting this problem, when the arithmetic of the consequences of Malta’s demographic gap is irrefutable. By failing to square with the electorate, the politicians of both parties are perpetrating a fraud on voters.

Malta’s generous welfare state is no longer affordable. Free hospital healthcare, free education and generous university stipends are placing great strains on the country’s economic viability. Yet, today – even as I write – the leaders of both political parties are competing to add further costs to these benefits. Both have set their faces against any form of means-testing and both seem committed to ever-increasing expenditure in these areas.

The Leader of the Opposition and the Finance Minister have claimed that gains can be made through greater efficiency. And they are right – though it begs the question as to why the Finance Minister has not acted accordingly already – so far as it goes. However, experience shows that efficiency gains are never as great as postulated and, in the final analysis, the only way to control social expenditure is to make cuts in budgets. None of the party leaders appears willing to contemplate such a course.            

A more cost-efficient approach to the provision of public goods and services, whereby only those demonstrably in need would benefit, must be adopted. Access to social benefits, healthcare, higher education and subsidies should be streamlined through a combination of means-testing and charging for services rendered.

A critical reassessment of the existing social benefits package should also be undertaken to distinguish between those that truly help to combat poverty and social ills, and others that are not so effective in achieving the desired results. Moreover, the benefits structure should be further refined with a view to making work pay and removing disincentives to enter the labour market. Pension reform should be undertaken without delay.

These are the stark realities of Malta's economic situation, which both parties are running away from. It is irresponsible, misleading, short-sighted and unworthy of them. We aspire to be an advanced European democratic republic, but what the two leaders are offering the Maltese electorate bears close comparison with a South American banana republic.

The questions floating voters – who will determine the outcome of this election – should be asking party leaders are: how do you intend to tackle the inescapable economic constraints that lie ahead for Malta’s welfare state? How will you deal with tax evasion, the black economy and corruption in public life?

Which of the two parties is most competent to deal effectively with these fundamental questions?