A Perverse Feeling

The Malta Independent 

A perverse feeling started creeping inside me this week which almost made me feel ashamed of myself. For the first time in more than four months I almost started feeling good that Labour was not elected.

Just imagine if Labour were in power and we start getting the sort of news we have been getting recently extended this week by the downgrade of our sovereign domestic credit rating by Standard & Poor’s.

Just imagine if a Labour government would announce that the fiscal deficit would be in excess of 7% of the GDP rather than the planned 4.5%. Imagine if a new Labour government were to announce that the public health system is in crisis and that the system was so unsustainable that many free services will have to be subjected to (subject to means testing) payment.

Imagine if Standard & Poor’s were to announce a sovereign downgrade 4 months into the life of a new Labour government. Imagine if a Labour government were to be forced to eat humble pie and re-open, purely as a fiscal crisis revenue boosting measure, an Investment Registration Scheme which ceremoniously was closed off as a once-only concession in December 2002.

Imagine if a Labour government delays the issue of social security payments to the most needful of society on the pretext that it has to weed out abusers thus making 999 sweat and hurt uselessly to track down the single abuser.

If this were to happen under a newly-elected Labour government we would undoubtedly have had a barrage of criticism from the PN in opposition and their friendly media that all this crisis owes it origin to the fact that the new government abandoned its plan for EU membership. And whilst we now know that it is no so, a new Labour government would have had a problem proving otherwise.

So yes, for the first time I have been entertaining an uncontrollable feeling that may be it is better this way. May be this is what the Maltese need to come to conclusion which a narrow segment of truly informed amongst us have long reached, i.e. that no foreign or external agents will solve problems for us; that we have to find the inner strength within us to address our weaknesses; that the most likely benefit of EU membership is not the bureaucracy or the prestige it involves, but the discipline to do what needs to be done without further excuses and procrastination.

If we had the Californian recall system there is no doubt that it could be used to re-write the script. With Labour belatedly but boldly accepting that the people’s choice for EU membership is superior to party policies and must be respected with determination and conviction, with our newly found knowledge that the economic situation was being misrepresented until the government could limp past the elections, with acceptance that EU membership on its own is no panacea and true solutions must come from within us, I have no doubt that the electorate would readily recall a Labour government to take us forward from this point on.

But sharing little with California, other than the Mediterranean weather and a mess in public finances, Malta is condemned to face this crisis with a fatigued government that has ran out of creative ideas and who is shamed to admit the problems and consequently keeps dangerously delaying the application of real though unpalatable solutions.

May be if it were possible for politicians to raise above themselves and act in a truly national interest as is required by the impending crisis, the government would readily admit the mess and offer the opposition a power/responsibility sharing arrangement in exchange for their disposition to join a national plan to render our economy competitive in a global world before we get buried beneath our perfectly made-in-Malta financial mess.