Star-Gazing and HSBC

Maltastar



The PN have been star-gazing for a long time. Their obsession for Malta to join the EU in membership, whatever the cost or consequences, has constrained them to forget they are really Maltese, bound by the constitution. They seem more at ease waving the EU flag with yellow stars on a blue base.`

Their manifesto is so scant on details and on specific measures that basically they are offering nothing but EU membership as a single automatic solution to all home-made problems, created by their incompetent administration over three legislatures.` Their manifesto is evidence that they have been doing nothing but star-gaze at the EU flag.

But since the Labour manifesto has been launched the nationalists have been star-gazing in a different way. It reminds me of a favourite past-time I have when on clear summer nights, from the terrace of my Kortin apartment, I gaze the star-studded skies and try to imagine shapes formed by the drawing imaginary lines joining a select group of stars.

Sometimes I see a bat, sometimes I figure a horse, a mouse, a cat and on and on until I dose off or just go to sleep.` It is a harmless exercise which helps me shed off life`s tensions.

`Their manifesto is evidence that they have been doing nothing but star-gaze at the EU flag.` It has however no relevance in the world of politics. But the PN are doing it. The have taken the MLP manifesto and have been shocked by the depth of its contents and by the fact that it has occupied the political agenda during the campaign. They are raging that they have not succeeded to keep the campaign as a single issue EU contest.

Consequently they have been forced to star-gaze Labour`s electoral manifesto. And just as in summer I imagine images which are not there, the PN are reading into our manifesto and coming out with conclusions that are as imaginary as the lines I draw to join the stars to form creative shapes.

How else could anyone explain their concluding that we are proposing a wage freeze` Since when has the sensible economic objective of having wages increasing commensurately with productivity increases in order to preserve our competitiveness, become worth denigrating as a wage freeze` How low can one go in repetitively quoting George Vella out of context as if he advocated a wage freeze, when in fact all he said was the obvious i.e.` that it would be economically suicidal if we are forced to increase wage rates purely to make good for the cost of living impulses which would be released by adoption of EU rules.

Where in our manifesto, except through star-gazing, does one find that Labour would be reducing social services or pensions as Minister Dalli has so imaginatively concluded`

But the biggest star-gazing exercise has been that related to HSBC employees. Labour`s manifesto is responsibly vague on our approaches to tackle the HSBC issue. Whatever Labour means to do is being framed within internationally accepted competition rules where those economic operators that hold a dominant position on the market will have to be more accountable to ensure they do not abuse their dominant position. Labour has been purposely vague to ensure that we leave ample space for negotiation to come to suitable agreement which would be in the interest of both parties and most importantly of the Maltese economy. `We will negotiate with HSBC in the interest of the Maltese nation and will make no apology for it`

Labour`s top priority with HSBC will be to ensure that they deliver on their promise to bring investment into Malta and to locate some of their international or regional business in Malta as they so gallantly indicated in the days leading to the signature of the agreement for the acquisition of their majority stake in the then Mid-Med Bank.` We will also remind the Bank of the social obligations which emerge from its dominant position to ensure that it adopts strategies that are attuned to the development of the Maltese economy; that it should not place primary focus on their strategy to convert ordinary bank deposits in foreign international wealth management products of the HSBC group but more on financing the development of the economy especially where SME`s are concerned.

We will negotiate with HSBC in the interest of the Maltese nation and will make no apology for it. We certainly expect no thanks or approval from the likes of John Dalli who irresponsibly sold out his underpants and all to HSBC, breaking all rules of prudent and transparent privatisations, and who can only expect to look even more incompetent through a new Labour government`s intervention with HSBC.

How or why this is being star-gazed to mean that we want to downsize HSBC is a symptom of the panic that is striking John Dalli et al as that their day of reckoning is approaching. I assure my former colleagues at HSBC that they have nothing to worry about. If there will be changes there will be changes which improve their status and will give them greater satisfaction that although their employer carries an internationally recognised brand, whilst thinking globally it has to act locally in full respect of the dominant position and the social responsibilities that emerge there from.