One to Go

The Malta Independent



Four years ago to the day the unthinkable happened. A democratically elected Labour government, forced by one of its own to seek a fresh electoral mandate when it was just one third through its existent one with only the pain but not the gain to show for performance, lost a pre-mature election.

What at the beginning of the campaign looked like a prospective labour confirmation at the end of it proved otherwise. Which shows that the quality, effectiveness and consistent crescendo of the campaign make the difference, as a decisive portion of the electorate remains undecided till the last moments.

`With one to go the PN would rather not talk about these issues and keep us occupied with EU chapters, open or closed, derogations, concessions and great victories in being able to keep part of what we already have.` Two issues made the campaign sway the nationalist way. One was their persuasiveness that the financial deficit problems bragged about by Sant et al were figments of their imagination invented to justify their incompetence.` They impressed that the party can start all over again as soon as the PN were returned to government where they would be able to tap a cool hundred million a year from the EU.` The other was that the whiter than white Labour administration was in fact already tarnished with corruption of which Lay Lay housing scandal was a vivid example.

Time is wiser than words. Four years later we know that the financial problems were and still are real having erased the feel-good factor and extracted Lm200 odd million in tax money out of our pockets without addressing the underlying problem. The cool hundred million remain eternally in the freezer.` We also know that the Lay Lay scandal was a fabrication created by the PN themselves with the inside help of Sciberras Grioli and others.

`Whilst the Commission has proclaimed that new members will not be net contributors in the first few years, the Nice agreement provides that the budget for 2007 `2012 will no longer be decided by unanimity.` With one to go the PN would rather not talk about these issues and keep us occupied with EU chapters, open or closed, derogations, concessions and great victories in being able to keep part of what we already have.

When it comes to funding we are told that we should all feel good that the EU Commission is on record saying that candidate countries will not be net contributors. No one even dares make a guess of the net funding that we will receive and this merely three months before negotiations ought to close.

With one year to go the thing which stands out mostly is that this country needs a change from a fatigued administration that has abandoned all hope of addressing domestic problems that impinge upon our everyday life, and is pinning all its hopes on getting foreign managers to run the country.

Having got foreign managers to run our main bank, our postal service, our airport and now our national airline, what the PN will be offering us during the coming final year of its mandate is that on account of their incompetence in running this country which has lost its money and its soul, we need foreign managers to run us from Brussels.

Anyone whoever thinks otherwise is absolutely not in line with what`s going on in Brussels. Whilst the Commission has proclaimed that new members will not be net contributors in the first few years, the Nice agreement provides that the budget for 2007 `2012 will no longer be decided by unanimity. You can imagine whose interests majority decisions will take care of when it comes to hard money.

Alfred Mifsud