A budget overshadowed

In parliament yesterday, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat once again demonstrated that he is not a political opponent to be taken lightly. But at the same time, his optimism and (at times) boastfulness may not be enough to dispel a cloud that has now settled over his administration.

In a sense this was not an ordinary budget speech. On Monday, Opposition leader Simon Busuttil constantly reminded the House that the budget itself had already been overshadowed by last week’s shooting incident. It had been not only the longest-ever budget speech, he quipped, but also the one soonest forgotten. People were no longer talking about the budget, but about the unanswered questions surrounding an apparent cover-up of a crime involving the police.

It was evident from his delivery yesterday that Muscat did not relish the reminder. In Busuttil’s speech there was an echo, however distant, of Eddie Fenech Adami’s 1986 declaration that the budget was “irrelevant” in the aftermath of the incidents at Tal-Barrani and the subsequent murder of Raymond Caruana.

The circumstances were clearly different, but Wednesday’s shooting did undeniably re-evoke memories of those times... enough to allow Busuttil the space to build up a narrative which (it must be said) also fits into the broader perception of an administration that has already reneged on its main electoral promise, meritocracy.

Last week’s incident, the Opposition leader suggested, was also symptomatic of the mentality that ‘if one was part of the government, one could do what one wanted’. And the same mentality was visible in the long list of ‘cosy arrangements’ cited by Busuttil as evidence of Muscat’s cronyism.

“Muscat has given his MPs well over €500 a week in honoraria with their appointments on boards and corporations… €24,000 to Silvio Parnis to buy his silence; €45,000 to Luciano Busuttil to sit quiet on the backbench; €50,000 to Charles Buhagiar, more than a minister; €57,000 to Anthony Agius Decelis, earning as much as the prime minister; €60,000 to the Labour whip and now government spokesperson Carmelo Abela; and €65,000 to Silvio Schembri for three jobs… hypocrites, you’re having a ball at the taxpayer’s expense.”

Confronted by this criticism, a visibly nettled Joseph Muscat went on to demonstrate what many see to be the strengths of his political persona: his serene grasp of the complexities of the Maltese economy, for instance, which enabled him to casually rebut numerous omissions and mistakes in his political rival’s arguments.

Busuttil’s criticism of the rise in debt of €500 million in the first six months of next year, for instance, was based on a miscalculation that 2,000 public service employees would retire, when the retirement age had just been raised to 62. The reality was that only 600 retired, while other sectors of the public service increase were accounted for by the ex-Arriva employees.

Other individual target areas proved similarly easy to defend, and also enabled Muscat to turn the tables onto the Opposition with a line of rebuttal we have grown only too accustomed to hearing. Time and again Muscat resorted, with feigned reluctance, to making like-with-like comparisons between his own performance after 500 days, and the PN’s achievements in its last five years. What followed was a bludgeoning of statistics, in which Muscat gleefully pointed out how his government outperformed Busuttil’s party in all economic criteria: employment, economic growth, deficit and national debt.

Individual arguments were patiently defused and dismantled: one which must have hit home concerned a comparison between the cost of electricity today, and the cost of electricity in 2010 (when international oil prices were the same). All this allowed Muscat to constantly hammer the point home that the Opposition should be the last to comment, given its own record in all such areas… culminating in the central argument that the PN has no ‘moral authority’ to criticise.

This may even be true, but the fact remains that it is not an argument. It is merely the automatic result of a heavily-outgunned opposition that has run out of political ammunition after a long spell in power.  And this says more about the Opposition than about the party in government.

One thing it certainly doesn’t tell us is whether Muscat’s government itself has the ‘moral authority’ it criticises the Opposition for lacking. Muscat can take credit for his economic achievements – the fact that we have the second-highest growth rate in the EU, for instance – and he can poke fun at the current financial state of the PN. Certainly he may have a point that the Opposition may be disconnected from the ordinary voter, if it feels the budget was not socially just.

But there was an aspect to Busuttil’s criticism that Muscat did not respond to at all. When an unprecedented majority voted in the Labour government in March 2013, it did so not just on the promise of cheaper electricity and better economic management. Voters were also lured by powerful ideals and aspirations of a different way of doing politics.

Muscat’s delivery could not conceal the fact that he was less confident on his ability to deliver precisely on these issues. Ironically, he himself may also be disconnected from the electorate on this point.