When my children were born, long years ago, I remember the energy and the happiness these newborns gave not just my wife and me, but the people around us as well. Family, friends and patients all shared with us. It was a great time; it was an expectant time.

As a family doctor, besides love, elation and plans for the future, I was also concerned with all sorts of thoughts – how healthy they would be and what they would be. I distinctly remember one night when we managed to grab a few minutes of quiet – because yes, children are great but they also rob you of most personal and intimate time – and what we talked about for those few minutes has remained stuck firmly and clearly in my mind.

I don’t remember whether it was my wife or me who started the talk but that night we promised ourselves that we would enjoy our children as much as possible and teach them to enjoy life to the full. We agreed to plan their future together, giving them the best we could. We were young and carefree but now we had a challenge and a maturity leap which we needed to keep in mind. We now had children who depended on us so we had to consider our steps well and if possible never fail or do anything that was harmful to our children.

So we laid aside our carefree spirit and pledged never to over-indulge them or over-promise. We would make all sorts of sacrifices so that, like our parents before us, we too would give them a good education and a good future. What I see around me now is exactly the opposite of this. Labour promised, Labour pledged not truth but impossible dreams. And the children – in this case all Maltese people – are suffering and stand to suffer even more in the future if, as already seems obvious from what the finance minister has announced, more taxes are going to rain on us all. Taxes do not move economies, they stifle them. And the worry is that their own kind, the ones who featured on their billboards, are expensive to maintain so more and more taxes are needed.

I cannot deny that we as a party, as the PN in government, didn’t always act right. Just as us parents sometimes do wrong things with our children and maybe don’t stick to all our pledges.

Everyone knows that the PN in government was solid in one thing – in its promises and in its finances. It pledged only what it could deliver. This Labour government has no clue and has no interest in doing what is right to fix their ways. Instead of learning, they keep promising and spending more – on new unnecessary wages, positions, and terrible decisions which cost not just money but also credibility. If we lose credibility with our EU associates, we will lose everything.

And, from what I have seen so far, Malta will soon be the laughing stock not just of foreign citizens but also of its own children. Labour has no clue and the whole of Malta is suffering. Like children who have horrid parents or spendthrift, lazy ones they cannot change their parents’ ways. The same as the electors, who now have a full four-and-a-half years of suffering caused by a choice many must surely be regretting already.