For months, the Nationalist Party cultivated a narrative that Malta had been swindled out of €400 million through the hospitals concession.

Alex Borg was in the middle of it and was one of the most vociferous together with Bernard Grech and Adrian Delia.

It was an explosive claim, repeated with the confidence of fact, and allowed to harden into accepted truth through sheer repetition.

This week’s ruling by the International Chamber of Commerce has revealed how hollow that story always was.
The tribunal’s findings were unambiguous.

Malta, it concluded, had received fair value from the concession. The figures, meticulously audited, show that the government received benefits worth €889 million, compared with €884 million for the private operator. The balance of less than five million euros is owed to the company, not by it.
That outcome strips away the central claim that hundreds of millions had been stolen.

The Opposition’s narrative, built on conjecture rather than evidence, now stands exposed as a political construction. It is an invention designed to damage rather than enlighten.
It is troubling that a party seeking to present itself as a government-in-waiting would so carelessly substitute accusation for proof. Public discourse cannot survive on slogans.

It has happened before.

When an opposition repeats figures it cannot substantiate, when it insists on outrage over fact, it does not merely weaken its credibility; it corrodes the very space where democratic debate should exist.
The ruling should prompt reflection inside the Nationalist Party. Accountability is not only for those in government. It also belongs to those who shape the political arguments that reach the public.

A responsible opposition tells hard truths; it does not manufacture them. The €400 million that never was is a reminder that in politics, truth is not what one shouts the loudest, but what survives the test of scrutiny.