At the BA… those 25,000 jobs again…

It may be the longest campaign in recent political history, but does it have to also be the most boring?

Going only on tonight's discussion on PBS, the answer seems to be (unfortunately)... yes. With the possible exception of AD's Arnold Cassola - who tried valiantly to inject a tone of optimism and enthusiasm into what was otherwise a bizarrely repetitive discussion - all speakers in tonight's televised electoral debate seemed incapable of ever raising the level of discussion above a plethora of facts and figures that we have all heard countless times before.

Small wonder thousands would flock to the mass meetings of l-Ajkla each week. But onto the discussion itself.

The theme chosen by the Nationalist Party was its own promise to create 25,000 jobs in the next five years: a promise which both Clyde Puli, MP, and Justice Minister Chris Said would repeat around 25,000 times during the ensuing discussion.

It was Said who set the ball rolling, and in what may be a text-book case of unintentional irony, he invited the audience to consider the PN's 'record' in office... only to afterwards be accused (by Labour's Manuel Micallef) of 'sounding like a stuck record' himself.

There was much truth to the criticism, even if it is a record the Nationalists know how to play very well. Said was nothing if not thoroughly convincing in his delivery: almost glowing with pride as he outlined his government's achievements in the job creation department.

Echoing his finance minister Tonio Fenech almost to the letter, he proceeded to deflect all earlier doubts shed on these figures by citing one EU 'confirmation' after another.

Under the PN, he said, Malta has achieved the sixth lowest rate of unemployment in the EU... a statistic that falls to the fourth, if you only count jobs in the youth bracket.

"But we are not content with this," he added, before launching into another shopping list of future government investments: 205 million in tourism; 100 million in the manufacturing sector; as well as introducing grants and tax exemptions for small enterprises.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the MP from Nadur stressed that many of these jobs will be created in Gozo: specifying the tourism and agriculture sectors as prime beneficiaries of future government investment in this regard.

Over to Manuel Micallef, and as expected the trade unionist brought his personal experience into the picture.

The world of employment and jobs is a world he comes into contact with every day, he began. As such, what he wanted to hear from government was not merely a promise of future job creation; he wanted to know exactly how the government intended to create those jobs.

Said's predictions, he claimed, were based on supply rather than demand. The figures themselves referred to the number of graduates over the next five years. But  was there any real guarantee that there will be jobs waiting for them after graduation?

Nor was he convinced that government could safeguard existing jobs... and here (oddly, given his own party's talk of semi-privatisating the state utility provider) he referred to the employees of Enemalta.

He also questioned the quality of jobs the PN was so confident it could create. Would graduates find emploment in the desired sectors? Or will people with law degrees end up working as receptionists?

Here followed the usual litany of failed PN promises of yesteryear: the most obvious examples being the failed projection of a sports village at White Rocks and the stillborn Smart City project.

This approach, he said, was symptomatic of a government that thought in terms of numbers instead of people.

Clyde Puli picked up almost exactly where Said had earlier left off: but although his own predictions were almost identical to those of his predecessor, Puli also chose to turn his attention to the past.

Labour, he said, was hardly a champion of predictions. Reminding viewers that Edward Scicluna was once a consultant to former minister Karmenu Vella - at a time when Malta a record high unemployment - Puli dragged out all the usual 'skeletons' from Labour's closet. How can we trust the people who had advised us against joining the European Union (and more specifically the eurozone)? The same question was repeated with reference to Muscat's views on Cyprus, and so forth.

Back to the future, Puli predicted that as a finance minister-in-waiting, Scicluna would live up to an earlier promise to remove stipends: which the Labour economist had once described as a 'sacred cow' that needed reforming.

Labour's track record, Puli said, was one of always realising how wrong they had earlier been. The PN, on the other hand, offered a guarantee of  timely decisions based on a proven track record in government. And producing one of the few memorable quips of the evening, he observed that "even on a timely decision concerning a 'blokka bajda' [the presumed 'white substance' that now fuels so much of the PN's campaign] Labour had got it all wrong."

Tension flickered at one point between Puli and the veteran economist Scicluna, who returned fire with a complaint that the PN seemed incapable of arguing without resorting to personal jibes and mudslinging. ... even if (to be fair) the discussion was  hardly the dirtiest we have seen to date.

More incisively, Scicluna addressed part of his delivery directly to employees of government corproations: producing signed letters of job guarantees by the Prime Minister before the last election - a promise, he said, which would be spectacularly broken.

Flying the flag for the Greens was veteran Arnold Cassola, who even got an extra slot (presumably to make up for the lack of collegaues on the programme).

Unlike the others, Cassola cast his pitch directly at the voter without inviting tedious comparisons between past records (or an even more tedious exchange of scandals). AD, he declared, was already influencing national policy from outside parliament: just imagine, he said, what the Green Party could do with even one seat in the House.

Twenty years ago AD was the first party to put the introduction of divorce on its electoral programme: now divorce was a reality on which there was broad consensus. The same was true of Malta's accession to the EU.

In what marked the only case of actual electioneering on the night, Cassola attempted - probably quite successfully - to add a much-needed feeling of gravitas to this election. His passionate plea to "make history together" elevated the tempo slightly; and if his observation that "even Obama agrees with us [on the proposal to raise minimum wage]" may have bordered on the comical, it did at least extend the horizons of the discussion beyond the increasingly shabby confines of the local.

Cassola also gets special bonus points for being the only speaker who needed no interruptions from Reno Bugeja to 'conclude his intervention'. But his wasn't a completely flawless performance. For one thing his over-reliance on written notes detracted from the otherwise welcome tone of sincerity throughout his performance. For another, he raised an apparent contradiction with AD's proposal of converting Manoel Island into a national park... while at the same time acknowledging that (unlike Armier) the present tenants have full legal title thanks to a government contract.

Cassola suggested that this contract will be rescinded, but no indication was given of how this will work in practice. Nor is it clear if this was the only fully legal contract the Green Party may wish to rescind if elected.

Like the promise of 25,000 jobs, the idea to simply pretend a government contract doesn't exist comes with its own serious limitations in the realism department. But then again, most of tonight's discussion was in fact the stuff of fantasy - or at leats, of wishful thinking.