Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1545002
7 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 20 MAY 2026 OPINION Promising heaven on the road to hell John Baldacchino An academic, essayist and visual artist WHEN the general election was called, I promised myself to keep my moaning to my safe space on social media. Yet, as I follow from a distance, my hypertension keeps increas- ing, particularly when listening to and watching characters who should know and say better. The more I hear about this and that, the more I feel increasingly dis- turbed and worried. The Labour Party and the Nationalist Party are indeed promising heaven on earth. But alas, the road they are travelling could well take Malta to hell. Telebejgh politics Insofar as the adage goes, the main tenor of the two parties is that "all will be well". So, it's not surprising that anything imag- inable is being promised, often without real costing. Listening to economist Marisa Xuereb in conversation with Jon Mallia, on 13 May 2026, should be enough to get one thinking, if not worrying, that there's trou- ble in store. Yet no one seems to care. Managerial and catchall poli- tics reign supreme, and as long as the Maltese economy is sus- tained by subsidies and short- term measures, we are told that everything will be OK. I take it that Xuereb's extensive expe- rience doesn't count much for those who have full faith in their tribal leaders. While they bicker, Labour and the Nationalists assume that the economic model which they took in turns to cultivate and grow since the 1980s is here to stay. In substance, their mani- festos look like a shopping cata- logue. Citizens are clearly treat- ed as consumers with a vote to trade in. The vote is now a sales voucher with a promise printed on the front. This explains why governments now take a "customer care" ap- proach, and with telebejgħ firm- ly established in the Maltese im- aginary, no one is surprised by how, come election-time, one's phone flares up with a bonanza of special discounts and offers. No wonder this aspect of Mal- tese politicking has become the butt of many jokes in popular discourse. Buy now pay later This approach reminds me of another phrase used in shop- ping: "Buy now, pay later". Even the rate of interest is of no con- cern. We are promised that the young may not even have to pay taxes in the first five years, the most productive of their career. Given that Malta relies on a na- tional pension scheme, the older generation is mostly superannu- ated by the younger work force. But that seems to be less im- portant at this point. The same goes with most promises. In the future, we are told, there will be enough to cover late payments. Those of my age will remember Arthur Daley, that shifty char- acter played by the late George Cole in the British TV series Minder (ITV 1979-1994) who used to sell any sort of dubious merchandise to his customers. When stuff did not work, he had his minder (played by a young Dennis Waterman) to sort things out. One wonders who will act as Minder in Malta's fu- ture economy. Blame the foreigner As if such shenanigans were not enough, the Maltese have now entered a new phase in their political imaginary. Given that political party clubs are no longer ransacked or burned down, party gran- dees are patting each other on the back and reassuring us all by how the Maltese elector- ate has "matured". This time round, they are not even accus- ing each other of corruption. Yet far from gone, the habit of tribal othering has evolved. In- stead of directly blaming each other, Labour and the Nation- alists are doing so through oth- ers. In their slick campaigns, they discovered a convenient and far more effective form of othering—blame the foreigner. It seems to have started with a Labour candidate who hap- pened to profess Islam as his religion. Hell broke loose in the ranks. Yet both dear leaders made sure that they say enough without upsetting the nativist apple cart from which, as it happens, they have been selling their wares for many years. Of course, this candidate might be Muslim, we were told by the Labour leadership. But there were several caveats. So, all his personal life was made public from his children's bap- tism, his family, his parents, his own life history, and anything there was to say about him without any regard to personal privacy. In the meantime, after being prompted to say some- thing by a journalist, the Na- tionalist leader reiterated that he and his party are not racist. End of story! A race to the bottom That was only the start. The foreigner had to be on the agen- da. Reels of candidates barking about foreign labour are now shared online. Clearly, these rants against foreigners were aimed at the party opposite—in this case, Labour. The accusa- tion is that foreigners are now blocking queues in hospitals and everywhere else. On the byword of over-population, which would even make Thom- as Malthus cringe, we are told that while it is "not racist to say so", the nativist argument dis- tinguishing between "Maltese" and "foreign" patients in poly- clinics is "valid". In full customer care dis- course, the nativist argument is even costed. While a few years ago we have been reminded (and rightly so) that foreign labour brings up to and be- yond €2 billion, the same voic- es—this time from the Labour front—want to reassure the na- tivists amidst their electorate that in line with (reactionary) governments sprouting up in Europe, including Scandinavia, it is "the norm" to get work- ers to wait for five years to get any benefits while they are still paying taxes and NI, and con- tributing billions of euros to the economy. These "socialist" paladins even went out of their way to show how this exclusion could be done legally. This is where the spin of cus- tomer care takes a nasty turn. For a long time now, none of those leading the PL and PN have ever taken clear leader- ship against nativism, just as no leader ever dares to say that racists have no place in their party. Let's not forget that nativism and xenophobia are not just opinions. They are morally ab- horrent and cannot be tolerat- ed in political discourse. What beggars belief is how anyone aspiring to run a democracy couldn't see how avoiding say- ing so and take a stand, they will have to face this cataclysm in the near future. But hey, you can always buy now and pay later! And who gives a fiddlestick if by then it would be all too late because society will be in hell?