Shipwreck

Maltastar

Last Autumn I was invited by Toni Abela and Wenzu Mintoff to participate in their programme ‘Robin Hood’ on Super One TV to debate the budget for 2003. It was the old style of ‘Robin Hood’ much more modest than the grand spectacle it has since grown into.

To ‘duel’ with me in the debate I found there Gordon Cordina instead of Prof Lino Briguglio as I had been pre-informed by the producers. As we debated we came to the point as to whether the deficit was in fact being addressed or camouflaged. I explained that on taking over the ministry in September 1998 minister Dalli had cooked the books and artificially pumped up the 1998 deficit which was expected to end up around Lm100 million and inflated it to Lm162 million later revised to Lm150 million.

This to give him a fabricated high deficit against which to measure future ‘progress’. It’s like the doctor who on his first visit to the patient purposely uses a faulty thermometer giving a high temperature reading so that subsequent readings will register non-existing progress.

I explained in the most clear way that this was deceitful manipulation, eventually pointed out in the Quarterly Review of the Central Bank of December 1998, purely to provide a statistical mirage that the deficit was being addressed when the underlying reality was otherwise.

“The same GordonCordina who did not want to get involved in a political controversy simply by confirming facts about the past was on Sunday addressing the most partisan channel of all, a mass meetingorganised by the PN, predicting the future in a way that helps and abets the case for EU membership.”

Gordon Cordina knew I was correct. He must have contributed to the piece in the December 1998 Central Bank Quarterly as at the time he worked in the Economic and Research Department of the Central Bank. It was a factual argument which he could have confirmed there and then as all serious apolitical technical people, with loyalty to the public to ensure it consumes correct factual information, would have done without any hesitation.

Yet strangely Cordina hesitated. Not even my direct exhortations with facts and figures would move him to admit such blatant manipulations. He did not deny or argue against an iota in what I was saying but would not be drawn into confirming it either. Privately he told that he did not want to participate in an argument which had become a hot political issue. I explained that the issue was technical and he just had to confirm the facts and then let the politicians draw whatever conclusion they want from the established facts. He clearly had no wish to use his undoubted technical competence to embarrass the government.

It appears that over Christmas some people go through a Harry Potter like transformation. The same Gordon Cordina who did not want to get involved in a political controversy simply by confirming facts about the past was on Sunday addressing the most partisan channel of all, a mass meeting organised by the PN, predicting the future in a way that helps and abets the case for EU membership.

Facts about the past scare Cordina-like professionals lest they get into some political controversy. Opinions, and very subjective ones at that, about the future related to the hottest political controversy around, scare them not at all, not even in addressing PN mass meetings.

There is more to it than just wanting or not wanting to get into political controversy. It seems these supposed apolitical professionals stay out of controversy only when it offends the government and have no qualms in rushing in whenever it helps the PN. Which makes me wonder whether this could be the result of government using its influence and our tax money to buy these people silence or mutterings as circumstances suit it?

I believe I read that Cordina gave up his job at the Central Bank to join team with Prof Lino Briguglio and was then re-engaged on consultancy basis with the Central Bank.

“The PN’s campaign is bound to shipwreck because as they say in business ‘good advertising kills a bad product faster than bad”

The same influence peddling seems to be going on across the whole business sector. I just cannot understand how organisation like the GRTU could suddenly switch positions to favourmembership when most of their membership, being small traders and self-employed, will be some of the worst hit by EU membership.

I just can’t understand how the MHRA, that in my time as its vice-president between 1995-1997, was so actively engaged crusading against imposition of a high rate of VAT on the tourist product, suddenly without a single exception, starts enjoying the pain of an increase of some 2% that will most probably come out of their margins, that EU membership VAT rules will brings to Malta’s tourist product.

Cordina-like professionals are free to skew their econometric model to prove that EU membership will bring more investment, local and FDI, which is the single most important source of future prosperity. Econometric models impress me not in least. It is hard rules of the economic game which shape my opinion.

And the simple rules of the game indicate that if through membership Malta has to give up its flexibility to differentiate its offerings from those of other candidate countries with a lower cost-base and easier geographical access to the EU markets, then in spite of the undoubted exposure that EU membership would give us among foreign direct investment (FDI) sources, we would in the final analysis fall out of the FDI game. Other locations would beat us leading to economic degradations and forcing our best labour resources to migrate to where the FDI is being attracted. Those are the EU rules. Just see what happened in the region below the ‘muro da Roma ad Ancona’ and play it back to our circumstances.

Monday is the feast of the shipwreck of St Paul. But my title is motivated by the reflection of how the PN campaign for the referendum is shipwrecking on Labour’s practicality of taking its case directly to the people.

While the PN prefers to address business organisations and professionals and favours them to mutter what suits their puppet-masters, Labour is talking straight the workers, the sole traders, the small business, the farmers the fishermen and explaining in concrete terms how their lives would be effected through EU membership and how partnership could safeguard the country’s flexibility to earn our living and develop without throwing any particular sector on the rubbish dump.

The PN’s campaign is bound to shipwreck because as they say in business ‘good advertising kills a bad product faster than bad advertising’