It is money galore, unscripted comments and racial slurs

I must admit that I am lost and cannot quite follow all the fiscal promises that have been presented by the political parties this week. The PN took everyone by surprise with their blanket succession tax reform and the new tax bands. The PL was surely not expecting such a plethora of tax incentives, and neither was it expecting the PN to enter the battle with so much enthusiasm in the second week.

But the Labour Party was also not slow in dishing out an equally impressive list of fiscal goodies, including a super bonus of €1,000.

It has to be seen if these proposals are going to be taken seriously by the electorate. My feeling is that most people are not quite following but there will be those who will take note when it impacts them directly.

It also has to be seen if the accusation by the prime minister that an alleged contrabandist, masterminded Alex Borg’s fuel hub idea at Hurd’s bank, will dent Abela in any way. Borg has come out denying the claim.

I am not quite too sure the allegation will harm Abela but what I am sure of is that the contrabandist comment was unnecessary and kept the ball firmly in the PN’s territory. It also kept the fuel hub on the agenda for longer than it deserved.

It was an unscripted intervention on the part of the prime minister that should never have been said in the first place. Reactive politics does not always favour the incumbent party.

For example, the long technical response and reaction on Saturday by Robert Abela to the PN’s proposal to abolish succession tax was interesting and good. But it was reactive. I am one of the few people who embraces succession tax and sees it as a socially-driven measure. The people who are going to benefit most from this proposal if it is implemented, are the big property owners and big business. But there is no denying that the PN’s proposal to remove inheritance tax altogether on property passed down from parents to children, will be welcomed by many, including normal folk.

The agenda needs to be set by the party that wants to set the direction and, in this respect, Alex Borg, has managed to keep his agenda centre stage. He has already skilfully steered away from not making corruption an issue and has gone to great lengths not to mention Joseph Muscat. He is also blessed with the complete absence of the group Repubblika and satellites that do not form part of the PN but are associated with it. Those distractions are no longer considerations in the campaign.

After a slow start, the PN is now in full campaign mode and they want everyone to listen even when they know people are not in the mood.

The PL have a formidable team but are constrained to see what Borg says and react to him. In the process this is making the PN so much more relevant than it ever was although its task to take on the PL’s track record on the economy is far from easy.

But other hiccups along the campaign trail have not helped the PL. The Manoel Island padel fiasco—a very fortunate businessman is expected to be fined a measly €900 for illegally built padel courts—is one such hiccup. All those independent-minded people, who campaigned for Manoel Island to become a national park are in a dilemma over the padel issue, which has also raised the ire of ordinary folk, who have had to pay fines running into thousands of euros to sanction minor planning transgressions.

The saga took an uglier twist when the prime minister said the decision as to whether the padel courts should be sanctioned or not was the remit of the Planning Authority.

Everyone knows that the PA is far from an independent authority with a mind of its own. It is not detached from what the executive wishes for.

But there was also another ugly incident characterising the campaign’s second week—Omar Rababah’s candidacy with the PL and the vitriol it attracted.

Nothing can justify the xenophobic comments, some even racist, from both sides of the political divide because Omar, a Muslim, decided to contest the election on a Labour ticket. The backlash was confirmation of our reluctance to embrace cultural diversity even though Omar is as Maltese as a Maltese could be.