Relativity

The Malta Independent

Relativity

Human nature is built on relativity. Hardly if ever there are any absolutes. Does one spoon of sugar in a cup of coffee make it too sweet` Yes for anyone used to drink coffee without sugar but no to the coffee drinker used to two spoonfuls.` So the same cup of` coffee with one spoon of sugar can taste very differently to different people.

Typical is the Prime Minister`s instant reaction to the replica delivered by the Leader of the Opposition to the budget presented by the government. The poorest budget reply he had ever heard` claimed Dr Fenech Adami just as I had thought that Alfred Sant had delivered his best ever budget replica speech.

I liked it because Dr Sant did not just` criticise; he actually showed the way forward with real and practical solutions. It is what serious voters should` expect from the opposition. Criticism comes easy. But anyone aspiring to be trusted with the responsibility to lead the country out of the identified problems should responsibly offer serious alternatives and practical solutions.

Apparently this is no coffee for our Prime Minister. He seems more comfortable with destructive criticism; with empty platitudes and demagogic assertions.` Dr Sant`s determination to assemble a wide social coalition to work out a broad based consensual restructuring plan seems to hit a sore psychic nerve with our Prime Minister. He expects to continue being` trusted to fix` the financial mess which he and his colleagues have so successfully engineered these last 14 years.` He expects that electors who were promised tax credit on a payments as varied as health insurance premium to house loan repayment instalments, should silently suffer and approve the savage attack on their standard of living by the passive impact of direct and indirect taxation.

Also relative is the definition of such intangibles as` greatness and wisdom.` Lou Bondi` thinks that I lack greatness and make immodest claims of wisdom. I often find myself at variance with Lou`s opinion which I all too often find motivated to deliver a specific though subtle agenda which always happens to disfavour the Labour Party. Malta must be unqiue in the democratic world. By Lou`s journalistic standards the opposition party deserve more criticism than the party in office. This weak I was interviewed by a pro-PN person supposedly on the 2002 budget but he was more interested to extract from me minute details of what the first budget of an eventual Labour government would contain,` rather than seek details of how the budget Minister is claiming that he can cash in Lm47 million in privatisation revenues within the next 19 working days from obscure negotiations still going on.

Still on this one Lou and I drink from the same cup of coffee. I never made any claim to greatness and restrict my claim for wisdom only the Friday morning.` In relatively terms though` that can hardly be defined immodest when from Lou`s side of the fence we have many contenders to eternal springs of wisdom 24 hours a day 7 days a week.



I also sense so much relativity in critics who so persuasively try to influence public opinion that Alfred Sant has missed the bus that could win him the next election. Such assertions by neo-believers in democracy who during their stint of power had publicly declared their unwillingness to spend five years in opposition under a newly and democratically elected government,` shows that such thoughts and sentiments persist. Only that it is now` being seen from the other side of the fence and that the vantage point is changed to suit the side on which the bread is buttered rather than the principles one believes in.