The government may not have had the budget miracle it had been hoping for when its own Budget 2013 failed to be approved by Parliament, but in lieu of that it pulled off another kind of budgetary miracle in Brussels this week.

Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi returned from Brussels on Friday night with a huge feather in his electoral cap, after having defeated all the odds by securing a €1.128 billion allocation from the European Union’s budget for the seven years between 2014 and 2020.

Malta’s balance, after making its contribution to the EU budget, will be €627 million, €149 million more than what it would have been under the European Commission’s original budgetary proposal – an impressive showing considering that this was the first time in history that the EU’s overall budget has been cut, and significantly so for that matter.

The result is even more impressive considering that Malta has lost its Objective 1 status since the country’s economic growth over the past few years has disqualified the country from Objective 1 funding, which is now known as Less Developed Region funding, and moved the country into being what is now known as a Transition Region.

Speaking yesterday morning, Dr Gonzi warned that if elected, the Labour Party would squander at least half of the funds secured for its power station project in Delimara, and called on the electorate to seriously consider who would put those funds to the best possible use in the best possible national interest.

The victory was significant, although the drastically cut EU budget will have a tough time being approved by the European Parliament.

But come what may, Malta’s political victory at the hard-fought EU summit, and the different ways in which the parties will propose utilising the funding, can very easily be expected to become a major and recurring campaign theme in the remaining weeks of the campaign trail.

The corruption carnival

As for the other major and recurring election theme, over this past week corruption has taken centre stage in this rather protracted election campaign. And after a somewhat slow start to the campaign as the parties sought to pace themselves in order to be able to last the rather long course of this campaign, the real punches are now beginning to be thrown.

And it was, after all, only a matter of time before the allegations of corruption began to emerge from the sleeves of the parties’ spin doctors.

The problem is that there are so many allegations that the man on the street with no particular political leaning will have a hard time ascertaining which is the least corrupt of the political parties. And of course those that carry their own political baggage or particular mindsets have no trouble at all pointing fingers.

We have had the oil procurement scandal, which, it has to be said, spills over to both parties’ tenures in office. Friday night’s Cabinet meeting clearing the way for a presidential pardon for one person involved in the scandal to reveal all in return for clemency is a major step in the right direction. 

The best step in the right direction, of course, would have been to have the long-delayed Whistleblower Act in place.

We have had the allegation of hefty sums owed by the Nationalist Party being forgiven in one way or another by one of the country’s leading contractors, accusations the party vehemently denies.

We have had the former Labour Party deputy leader Anglu Farrugia claiming that the party has sold its soul by entering into unholy arrangements with big business, which that party also adamantly denies.

And now we have had General Workers’ Union secretary general Tony Zarb being caught on tape assuring a contractor that tenders would be facilitated by the GWU, should the Labour Party make it to government, for companies that played ball with the union, among other unsavoury offers.

And while we are more than certain that the Labour Party has not condoned what has been very clearly suggested by the union leader – we have heard the full unedited recording and there is little doubt as to the veracity of what the Nationalist Party media is claiming – it still reflects badly on the party.

Now both parties are making the appropriate noises about revealing their campaign expenses, but so far nothing has been forthcoming. And that is why we needed to have a law on party financing before this election campaign began, as had been promised.

That, however, never materialised and the real loser in this state of affairs is not one party or another but, rather, the electorate itself.