The electoral campaign is only two weeks old, but we have already seen three massive U-turns by the Labour Party.

The first was the decision to take a piece of virgin land in Zonqor back from the Sadeen Group.

The second was to scrap the planned Marsascala marina.

And the third was to suspend the sale of Maltese passports to Russians and Belarussians.

All three are, in the end, good decisions, but the timing is nothing short of questionable, especially given the fact that government was still defending some of these decisions up until a few days ago.

For several weeks, government defended the plan to turn Marsascala Bay, a popular swimming spot and harbour for fishing boats, into a luxury marina catering for the mega rich. Ian Borg had told us that this was necessary because “many Maltese are buying boats” and there is nowhere else to develop a marina, except for Xemxija.

Despite the mounting opposition, including by NGOs and the Labour-led Marsascala council, Borg continued to defend the project. He even tried to justify it by comparing it to the 2008 Vittoriosa marina, developed by the Nationalists.

A couple of weeks ago, Labour Marsascala mayor Mario Calleja told this newsroom that “you have to really be brainless to be in favour of the marina as it’s been proposed”. Yet Minister Borg seemed intent to push on with his plans and acted as if it was only an “Opposition candidate” who was objecting to the marina.

Then, a few days later, the Prime Minister announced that the project was to be scrapped completely, claiming that government had “listened” to the people. But was it the people the government had listened to or the dissent that the project was causing among the district candidates, who happen to include his number two: Deputy Prime Minister Chris Fearne?

While we are relieved that the project will not materialise, this feels like a downright populist election-eve move. Government should have listened much sooner.

The Zonqor decision was taken in the same vein. When the Muscat administration had announced that a huge piece of virgin land would be given to a foreign university, several protests had taken place at the site. Over the years, the transfer of the land became even more questionable, given that the American University of Malta did not even manage to fill a quarter of its campus at Cospicua, let alone a campus four times bigger in Marsascala.

To make matters worse, the company has been losing millions year on year, student enrolment has been poor and the faculty lost many staff members. Despite these apparent shortcomings, the Labour government had refused to take the land back.

But now an election has come, so, of course, things have changed. While it is true that today we have a different prime minister, much of today’s Cabinet remains the same as Muscat’s. Today, those Cabinet members are saying that they took the right decision “collectively”. Up until a few months ago, they thought differently about the subject.

Then there is the passports’ fiasco. Malta has long been under fire over its golden visa scheme. Call it whatever you want, it is a scheme whereby Malta sells passports to wealthy individuals around the world, giving them access to the EU market. Malta risks being taken to the EU court over the matter, together with Cyprus. Meanwhile, government continues to insist that this is “a matter of national competency”.

But things changed last week when Russia launched a bloody war in Ukraine, and the EU, together with many Western countries, imposed new economic sanctions against Russia.

Immediately, there were calls by the EU for Malta to stop selling passports to Russians, including by the President of the EP, Roberta Metsola, who said the scheme can be used as a loophole by Russian oligarchs hit by sanctions.

Government’s initial reaction was to bury its head in the sand. The junior minister responsible for the scheme told us that “not all Russians are bad” and that Malta’s due diligence process is “next to none”. In fact, he said, Malta teaches other countries how to conduct their due diligence. We were also told that no Russian-Maltese passport holders were affected by the sanctions. The PM also refused to say that the scheme would be closed to Russians.

Just a few hours later, it emerged that at least one wealthy Russian with close ties to Putin, whose company has been struck off the London Stock Exchange, had bought a Maltese passport in 2017.

Government’s next U-turn was to announce that the sale and applications of Maltese citizenship to Russians and Belarussians has been suspended in view of the fact that the due diligence cannot be properly carried out under current circumstances.

Some said that government was “proactive” and stopped the scheme, but the truth is that it was reactive, and it reacted very late in the day. In the spirit of European solidarity with the Ukrainian people, government should have closed the scheme to Russians the minute the first Russian soldier set foot on Ukrainian soil.

Once again, this was a populist move aimed only at saving Malta’s face after months of doing the wrong thing.

The campaign is still young. One wonders what other U-turn will come next.