For someone to buy your vote, you have to be willing to sell it

In February 2022, just before the general elections which were held a month later, PM Robert Abela made an electoral promise that if the Labour government were to be re-elected, full-time students who continue to study at post-secondary level, would be receiving a subsidy of €500 a year over a period of three years.

The Labour government was re-elected and in last year’s Budget, the allowance was announced for students aged between 16 and 19.

Sure enough, on Thursday, the money plopped into the parents’ accounts via bank transfer.  As we say sarcastically in Maltese x’kumbinazzjoni! (what a coincidence) that the timing of this grant just happens to coincide with the election campaign for the European Parliament and the local councils.

This hasn’t been the only recent freebie of course: Cheques have been arriving for tax refunds, for the cost of living and for those who work on shifts. As the Prime Minister, himself has pointed out with the publication of the Vitals inquiry, timing is everything, so he should be the first to appreciate why the nation is so sceptical about this sudden flurry of cheques being received in the post and money suddenly appearing in their account with less than two weeks to go before we go to the polls.

But surely everyone should be happy with all this “free” money, right? Well, it depends who you speak to. Staunch Labour voters will simply use it as an illustration and reinforcement of why they will once again be voting for their party (“the other ones never gave me anything”). For them, all the niggling misgivings they may have had about corruption allegations on an unprecedented scale, are being magically erased like one of those etch-a-sketch boards we had as kids. And let’s face it, they were always going to vote Labour anyway.

Some Nationalist voters will either openly sneer in contempt while keeping the money anyway (and complaining if they don’t get their share) or else they will say nothing because, hey, €500 for your kid is not to be sneezed at. Others might even prefer to give the money to charity, thus washing their hands of being complicit in what looks like a blatant, brazen attempt to buy votes.

And that is the clincher, isn’t it? Ever since Labour came into power they have dangled money like a bunch of carrots in front of the electorate, and this tactic is invariably cranked up when they realise they are losing support in the surveys. However, I often wonder how many people are actually swayed by these gimmicks or whether people just pocket this largesse, shrug cynically and vote for whoever they want to anyway.

Let’s say you are an erstwhile Labour supporter who has vowed to abstain because you want to protest against the way the country is being led, but cannot bear to vote for any other party.  Or maybe you are a floating voter who does not have any party allegiance and truly tries to vote for the best candidates. Will a tax refund for €140 really make you change your mind and go out and vote Labour? Would €500 finally push you over the edge and make you say, oh, hell, why not?

I think that if the answer to these questions is yes, and you are willing to change your principles so readily, then the problem is not just that the government in power is trying to buy your vote (which in itself is unethical) but that you are so easily persuaded to sell it.  There is a lot of cognitive dissonance at work here and people are capable of doing all sorts of mental somersaults to justify their behaviour.

Another thought that has been percolating in my mind for a while is… just how much money does the present administration actually have at its disposal to give away like candy? It seems that the answer to every problem is to throw money at it, which makes it seem that there is a bottomless pit of funds. If one looks at a few of the services which have been made available to the public for free over the last few years, it is difficult to understand how it can all be sustainable:

• Free childcare

• Free public transport (including harbour ferries)

• Free school transport

Energy bills are also subsidised, which likewise come at a heavy cost. Let us not even mention the number of millions which have been squandered due to scandalous deals, persons of trusts being paid obscene amounts and highly publicised projects which turn out to be expensive white elephants.

Where is all the money coming from? Back in 2015 when he was still finance minister, Edward Scicluna said that if it were up to him, the bus service would be offered free of charge, “if the country could afford it”. And abracadabra, seven years later in 2022, what do you know, it suddenly could afford it. While the Golden Passport scheme might go some way to cover all these new freebies, surely sustaining all this recurring expenditure requires a very substantial steady flow of millions.

It is when one looks at Malta's debt that things stop looking so rosy, with the latest figures showing that it has risen to €9,740 million. As the shadow minister for finance, Graham Bencini, pointed out, Malta was paying €4m interest on its borrowing every week or €590,000 every day. Bencini noted that “in 2022 Malta had a deficit of €982.2 million, which was 5.7% of GDP. That meant Malta had the fourth-highest deficit in the EU, where the average deficit was 3.3%.”

The shadow minister warned that the public debt was becoming a millstone for future generations. He added that the government needed to stop squandering and control unsustainable recurrent expenditure, as it had been warned by the International Monetary Fund.

All this reminds me of American podcaster Dave Ramsey who is the founder and CEO of the company Ramsey Solutions, where he's helped people take control of their finances and their lives. When he replies to callers who are hopelessly in debt but keep on buying things they cannot afford, his favourite saying is “you’re spending money like you’re in Congress”.  It is his catchphrase to indicate going into incredible debt and overspending year and every year, regardless of one’s budget, much like Congress does with taxpayers’ money.

Basically, like so many people who are trying to live a lavish lifestyle using credit cards, spending money they do not have and fooling themselves that everything is hunky dory even though they have dug themselves into a deep hole of debt, Malta too is living beyond its means.