Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1448619
10 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 6 FEBRUARY 2022 Raphael Vassallo OPINION 'Welcome to Tropico… I mean, Malta…' PICTURE the scene: we are on a small island-state, somewhere on the periphery of a large world superpower. There is an elec- tion coming up. The incumbent Prime Minister – sorry, 'El Presi- dente' – is concerned at the pos- sibility of losing his first (and, in his own view, entirely unneces- sary) encounter with direct de- mocracy. But at the eleventh hour, El Presidente receives a phone-call from a high-positioned ally in the neighbouring world super- power. He is bluntly informed, over the phone, that the secret to winning elections consists in just one word – MONEY! – and that his Swiss Bank Account has just benefitted from a generous 'campaign donation', to the tune of (as I recall) $100 million. El Presidente also receives ad- vice on how to spend that mon- ey. He should use it to: a) 'Bribe Faction Leaders' (which would drastically reduce popular discontent across the board), and; b) Issue a 'Tax Cut' edict (which, for obvious reasons, would make everyone just that much happier with their present government…) And hey presto! What had pre- viously seemed an unwinnable election, suddenly translates in- to a 90+% majority for… drums rolling… El Presidente! [Note: and it can even become a 99% majority, if you also avail of the 'Rig the Election' option in the game menu…] Now: if you are in any way fa- miliar with the above scenar- io, it can only mean one of two things. Either you have played a 2013 computer game called 'Tropico 4' (in which case: admit it… you cheated to win that elec- tion, didn't you? Otherwise, you would never have got past that campaign mission at all…) Or else, you have lived in Malta long enough to have witnessed at least one election first-hand. Heck, some of you may even have experienced both those things simultaneously (Note: I make it a point to replay the Tropico campaign, once every five years or so… just to remind myself what few differences re- ally exist, between our own 'in- dependent island nation-state'… and a fictitious Caribbean Ba- nana Republic, ruled by a tin-pot dictator.) In fact: only a few, very minor details actually need changing, to turn that 'Tropico' scenario into an entirely accurate descrip- tion of the sort of 'vote-buying' we witness before every Maltese election. Take the 'Bribe the Faction Leaders' option, for instance: it's exactly the same in Malta… ex- cept that – erm – it usually works the clean other way round. Yes, folks: it is our 'faction leaders' – the construction mag- nates; the industry lobbyists; the hunters and trappers; the illegal boathouse owners; the 'this'; the 'that'; and the 'other' – who quite blatantly hold the two po- litical parties to ransom, for the full five years leading up to the election… … and they have been doing this for so long, and so success- fully, that some of them have even started openly boasting about it (like former MDA pres- ident Sandro Chetcuti, who fa- mously likened the two parties with 'supermarkets for develop- ers')… Meanwhile – more bizarrely still – the two parties themselves have even started complaining about it, too. Labour's Luciano Busuttil, for instance, recently told The Times that "dishing out jobs, making false promises and even handing out free fridges to voters is all fair game in Maltese politics." Not to be outdone, a PN can- didate by the name of Malcolm Bezzina went a step further: "I voted Labour in 2013 because I was promised assistance with an operation that I needed to have done in the UK, after pursuing a treatment that was not offered in Malta… [But] once Labour was elected, all the doors were closed. I never got assistance from the government…" And this, I suppose, only illus- trates the truth of that ancient, time-honoured economic prin- ciple: 'It takes two to tango'. Just as any transaction requires both a seller, and a buyer… so, too, can elections only be bought, and sold, through negotiations between two, equally 'involved', business partners. In practice, this simply means that 'Bribe the Faction leaders', and 'Be bribed by the Faction leaders', are different ways of saying the same thing. Nor does even it matter much, whether the 'bribe' itself takes the form of… MONEY! (as it does in the game)… or planning permits; tax exemptions; beach concessions; or even, for that matter, the 'five free energy-saving light bulbs' that former finance minister To- nio Fenech once tried to flog off to us, on the eve of an election. (Indeed, it surprises me little that it had to be Fenech him- self, of all people, to first iden- tify Robert Abela's latest stunt for the 'vote-buying exercise' it really is. He does, after all, have quite a lot of experience playing this particular game…) Naturally, this brings us to the second item on the election-buy- ing menu: 'Issuing the Tax Cut Edict'. And again, all you need to do to is glance at this week's newspaper headlines, to practi- cally see Penultimo's face grin- ning back to you from the page. [Note: that was a Tropico 4 in- joke… so I imagine both Abela and Fenech understood it only too well.] "Abela hands out €70 million in €100-€200 cheques to work- ers, students and pensioners"… Honestly, though: why not just set up a market stall, and hang out a sign saying 'Votes For Sale'? For how else can we possibly in- terpret an announcement that – in case nobody else has noticed – seems to blatantly contradict the objectives of Budget 2022, as described to us by none oth- er than Finance Minister Clyde Caruana last November? That's right, folks: the same Clyde Caruana who told us all the budget would "step up the fight against tax evasion, and collect overdue [tax] arrears"… … was suddenly standing right beside Robert Abela, as he prac- tically showered us with "€100- €200 cheques", scattered from the rooftops like confetti – and aimed at practically everyone, too: for to those 'workers, stu- dents, pensioners', we must al- so add 'anyone who is on social benefits'… and as I far as I can see, that covers pretty much the full spectrum of eligible Maltese voters, down to the last conceiv- able voter-bracket…. So… what can I say? Either Caruana's 'overdue tax collec- tion' was so extraordinarily suc- cessful, that government found it had an unexpected extra €70 million, to just blow on a little electoral 'shopping-spree'… … or else, that government decided to postpone the 'tax collecting' part of its mission, to concentrate – just as the player does, in Tropico 4 – on progressing past the current campaign hurdle: 'Winning the Election'. (And given that Ab- ela's overwhelming generosity has already inflated the national deficit to over €1.5 billion… I'm inclined towards the latter op- tion, myself.) Having said this: there are a few notable differences between Tropico and Malta, too. Let's get the most obvious out of the way first: when playing the computer game, you are consciously em- ulating the likes of unabashedly 'dictatorial' rulers such as Papa Doc, Rafael Trujillo, Pedro San- tana, etc. So you are more or less 'expected' – 'encouraged', even – to be openly disdainful towards the democratic process (and to- wards 'fair play' in general). And yet… even in a God-for- saken, 'Generalissimo-ridden',