Prime Minister Robert Abela was on top form in his speech concluding the Labour party congress. "Only we can give you the guarantees, only we, only we," Abela insisted.  What he really meant was "only I". 

Robert Abela seems to be drifting steadily into delusions of grandeur.  And his claims get ever more outlandish.  In a clear dig at his disgraced predecessor, Joseph Muscat, Abela proclaimed to the party faithful - "we are no longer just the best in Europe, we are the best in the history of Europe". Muscat only made Malta the best in Europe.  But Robert Abela made Malta the best ever.  The GOAT - the greatest of all time.  The one and only - "only I" can save you.  "Only I" have the leadership qualities and the economic competence.  Only I can make Malta better - Malta Aqwa.  Only I can make Malta greater.  Making Malta greater again is Abela's new Trumpian battle cry.

Just last September, a few short months ago, another European Prime Minister was using the exact same rhetoric. "We must dare to make Hungary great again", Viktor Orban told a packed arena. Hungary must be "great and prosperous", he added, promising much of what Abela keeps pushing - more borrowing and mounting debts to buy himself more time.

For Orban, it didn't work. His people had had enough of his corruption and cronyism, his empty promises and his state looting. They didn't just vote him out.  Hungary delivered a death blow to Europe's strongman, from which he can never recover.

Like Robert Abela, Orban projected himself as the only saviour of the nation, the sole defender of the country and its sovereignty even as he turned Hungary into a vassal state of Putin's Russia. The crushing defeat he suffered at the hands of his own electorate made it amply clear that nobody believed his fictitious propaganda.

At his party's congress, Robert Abela was pumping out his own fiction. "The war chest is fuller than ever before," Abela told the country, "250 million euro and counting, saved for you". This is the man who single-handedly created more debt for the country than all other previous prime ministers put together. Robert Abela is personally responsible for that massive 11.4 billion euro debt mountain.  In the few years he's been prime minister he's added 6 billion euro of debts - that's 6,000 million euro.  Yet he had the audacity to tell the cheering Labour hardcore that he had "saved for you" 250 million. After creating a record debt burden for the country and a record deficit, he had the cheek to claim that "we have the economic competence".  "Since we were trusted to lead this nation we performed one economic miracle after another," Abela insisted, portraying himself as a divine being with miraculous power.  The next thing you know, we'll be seeing him post images of himself wearing flowing robes and placing his hand on the forehead of a sickly man lying in a hospital bed, with a glowing light radiating from his healing hand.

The people of Hungary saw right through Orban's propaganda and empty promises. It wasn't just his defeat that was astounding but the massive scale of the total rout. The following day Orban's foreign minister was accused of barricading himself in his office and frantically shredding documents. The streets behind the Foreign ministry were filled with skips overflowing with shredded documents. Orban and his inner circle are now desperately trying to cover up their tracks and their crimes.  Democracies don't shred their archives the minute they lose power - only authoritarians do.

Orban took over the state broadcasting and turned it into his personal propaganda machine, stifling the voices of the opposition and dissenters.  The newly elected Peter Magyar lost no time in denouncing Hungary's TVM equivalent as "a factory of lies" and pledging to "immediately suspend this deceitful news service".  He also promised "a purge of the plunderers", and that he would bring those who looted the state to justice.

At the end of the day, no amount of propaganda by the national broadcaster, no amount of suppression of the opposition could save Orban. That should be an eye-opener for Robert Abela who has stuffed the state broadcaster with Labour loyalists and who has been diverting millions of euro in direct orders and contracts to Labour friendly companies and to his own business partners.  Ultimately all the grand promises that Orban made on the eve of the election counted for nothing.

"Keep enjoying life," Abela told the nation, "no matter what happens we will be there for all of you....we will never leave you, you will always find us behind you". The real question is whether he will find the people behind him now that he has called an election. Now expect more of Abela's incredible claims of his miraculous powers and his unique vital qualities.  Expect more bizarre claims that "only I" can save the country from the catastrophic disaster that awaits it without him at the helm. Expect more rosy surveys portraying him as the invincible saviour of the nation.

Viktor Orban was meant to be impossible to beat. His grip on power was far too strong. Nobody could contemplate a Hungary without him. Yet the people of Hungary had other plans.  His defeat couldn't have been more emphatic. As long as the economic situation was favourable many Hungarians were willing to ignore Orban's state looting, his cronyism and his corruption - even his repression - until they realised they were being robbed of their money, their land and their freedom. They figured out that Orban, "the sole saviour", had betrayed them.

Someday Malta will realise too that there is no war chest "fuller than ever before". Malta will find out that the economic competence of those in power served only to enrich themselves while the country's debt burden soared.