He’s having cold feet about the election date. Apparently. He had almost made up his mind about a March election but he’s not so sure anymore.
Short of an Atocha bombing there’s little to shake the expectation of a Labour landslide whenever it is during the next 6 months that the election is called for. But Abela doesn’t just want any landslide. We hear Labour polling is telling him to expect a 30,000 majority over the PN. Abela wants 40,000. At least. And this is not just about being a greedy bastard, which he is. Believe it or not he perceives this need as a floor requirement for his very survival.
You can’t say Joseph Muscat is looming in the background. Joseph Muscat looms very much in the foreground. And Robert Abela cannot change that unless he shows Muscat’s maniacal supporters that he can do better at the polls than his predecessor.
This is ridiculous. It should be anyway. It makes no operational or policy difference if the government commands a majority with a difference of 9 instead of 7 or 5 MPs. You don’t get extra points for swallowing 7% more than half a cake, instead of swallowing a more modest 5% over the same half.
This only makes a difference to those maniacs for whom elections are about celebrating wildly in the street after winning. For them – and they amount to thousands – the electoral process has nothing to do with democratic expression, or even management preference, let alone ideological determination. They couldn’t care less about any of that. All they want is bragging rights, the privilege of dancing drunkenly in the street while their sibling or neighbour who supports the other side seethes at home in the dark.
You have these apes in every democracy but in other democracies these sorts of people don’t bother to vote. Typically, they don’t even realise an election is coming because they’re watching soaps or the footy while the news is on. So, they behave the way our political fans wail in silly girl Beatle screams about their political party in expression of support of some other pointless casus belli, typically a football team, caring less about how their team got there, obsessed instead with what the team managed to do when it gave them the license to celebrate winning.
Because of these right royal idiots, we have Robert Abela exceeding even the most depraved depths politicians can be expected to descend to secure victory at an election. If winning is not enough, if even crushing the opponent is not enough, if only a victory greater than last time’s is acceptable, the demented corruption that will be required to achieve that unprecedented aim will have to come from beyond our imagination. It is not beyond the imagination of Robert Abela.
Consider today’s announcement of a cheque sent to every voting citizen of this country. Forget the detail of whether you stand to get €60 or €200. Whatever it is you get, you’ll spend it before the next full moon. Whatever it is, whatever your personal economic situation, it will not be a lot of money at all. It will not change your life. Even for a week. And if it did change your life for a week and not anymore after that, can such a thing, whatever it costs, be called good policy making and getting good value from the spending of taxpayers’ money?
This ephemeral bribe will collectively cost us €70 million. Breathe that in. Seventy million euro. Spent just like that, in a week. Don’t consume the economic fallacy that this is money injected in the economy. That’s complete hogwash. An injection in the economy comes from outside it. No Father Christmas is bringing these €70 million from the North Pole. They’re coming from taxes, i.e., money already taken out from the economy in the first place. They’re just being put back.
And no, that’s not a good thing. Because taxes were collected in the first place to be put to good use in the public interest. They were collected because the government claimed they were needed. They were collected while several other millions remain owed to the government in taxes the government has not bothered to try collecting.
€70 million could build a school. They could build a public park, or 4. They could, if the objective needed to be economic, be used to incentivise employees to retrain or viable businesses to invest. Or even if the money was going to go into pure redistribution, levelling the wealthy with the poor, it would be spent carefully to go to the most deserving.
Instead, your garden variety millionaire is getting the same subsidy as someone who’s sleeping in their car because they can’t afford the rent to sleep on a mattress in a garage without a toilet. There’s no other way to call it. It’s bloody unfair and a bloody waste of a lot of money.
€70 million cannot solve all the problems in our society, but these specific €70 million will solve none of them. They will barely amount to a band aid. It’s like that picture of Pablo Escobar burning piles of cash because he ran out of wood for the fireplace. And he was feeling cold.
All this is happening, all this money is being spent, because Robert Abela is dissatisfied with the dead certain expectation of being confirmed as prime minister for the next 5 years. Even as prime minister, having to breathe the air of the room Joseph Muscat keeps farting in, is a prospect he dreads and will do anything (with your money) to avoid.
All this is happening because Robert Abela cannot think of a better way of neutralising Joseph Muscat’s next urbi et orbi broadcast from his Burmarrad washroom or from the premium waterside fully detached gated office backed by a luxury marina and fronted by Malta’s only urban wood given to Joseph Muscat as a gift in gratitude for having shafted us all.
While Robert Abela waits for polls to turn towards a chance at a post-1946 national record majority, he’ll continue burning whatever piles of cash he can get his hands on.
This is the real cost of severance with Joseph Muscat, well beyond the six figure sums in cash and the plush premium office space. This is the real cost of outgrowing the legacy of that man we’re not allowed to describe as a criminal because no one has had the guts yet to charge him for his conduct when he gave himself what he promised us would be the best of our times.