The Malta Independent on Sunday
“Are you preparing a very harsh budget?” the
interviewer asked Dr Fenech Adami recently.
His
reply is awesome. “The country can no longer ignore issues that exist and have
to be tackled seriously. Sometimes, interim solutions are sought. The time for
that is past. This is clear in the case of the drydocks. We have been seeking
interim solutions, which have not given us long-term results. This also applies
to other issues, almost across the board. Look at social security and the health
system... we have to seek long term solutions.”
I cannot agree more. I have been hammering at it for years that the country was expensively seeking interim short-sighted patch-ups which would in time make real lasting solutions far more painful and difficult. What marvels me is the coldness with which the Prime Minister now admits it. He makes it sound as if he is a new-comer trying to put right what predecessors had fouled. He seems to forget that he has been running the show for 16 years almost uninterruptedly. What marvels me is the gentle strokes with which interviewers accept these sort of replies rather than demand why we had to come to this stage.
One must not forget that barely six months back in pre-election mode the same Prime Minister was proclaiming solemnly that all was fine and dandy. That State finances were on solid foundations. That everything was sustainable and that EU accession would, on its own produce an influx of new investment which will spur economic growth without having to take hard cost cutting measures.
I should repeat an analysis I had written on May 9, 2003, in this paper’s sister daily where I had analysed Dr Fenech Adami’s performance on the 16th anniversary of his first election win on 9 May, 1987. I had stated that:
“Sixteen years of his administration has given the country a false sense of prosperity and well-being built on very shaky foundations that future generations will struggle to maintain as they will have to make good for past excesses. These can best be signified in the three major structural problems which will come to face us with daunting if not horrifying stark reality.
“Firstly we have the fiscal deficit problem. We still await publication of the December 2002 figures. November 2002 figures showed that in spite of Lm21 million cosmetic exercise related to MIA privatisation we were Lm30 million off the mark as at end November. Stories about attempts being made to shift expenditure from year to year to hide the extent of the deficit have been made and never convincingly refuted.
“Be what it may such problems cannot be solved by cosmetics or creative accounting but by sustainable economic growth and serious expenditure controls.
“The environmental faults we have developed are seriously threatening sustainability of economic growth and our quality of life. Waste mismanagement, air and sea pollution, uncontrolled urban sprawl and horrific road and transport problems are a distasteful legacy of an unbalanced administration where short term party political priorities were given precedence over the real national interest.
“Lastly the unfunded pension liabilities which have been allowed to accumulate whilst taking political advantage from short-term over-consumption which fuelled and extended the pension problem, is becoming a reality that can no longer be postponed.
“I have a theory that Dr Fenech Adami’s recent electoral success is totally due to Labour’s unwise decision for the EU issue to be decided through an election not through a referendum. This has placed Dr Fenech Adami in the strange situation where the more he was criticised on the domestic front, the more his re-election prospects improved through the support of the many who thought that the country could no longer do without the externally imposed discipline of EU membership.
“This is fine for Fenech Adami as a party leader. But not so fine for a statesman who should have delivered the country in a good state to decide on EU membership on its merits and not through default because of the imbalances his laissez-fair style allowed to materialise.”
I am pleased that Dr Fenech Adami is evidently sharing my own assessment of his performance and that he seems determined that in the last phase of his political career, free from the pressures of seeking re-election, he seems inclined to put the country back on a sustainable track to make up for past excesses. I think he owes this much to the well-meaning citizens of this micro-State who have chosen EU membership not as a panacea for our ills, but as a external source of discipline to force our political leaders to take decisions and initiative meant to serve the long-term sustainability of the catch-up process of our standard of living to EU averages rather than to serve the short term interest of politicians to acquire or remain in power.
Hard decisions await us. And hard decisions will find great resistance for acceptance especially by those who were consistently led to believe that the free lunch could last forever. To facilitate acceptance, solutions have to be and be perceived as being fair.
I strongly feel that by tackling the issue sectorially the fairness dimension will be missing and resistance will be fortified possibly to the point of aborting the process of change. The obvious question is Why the drydocks? Why Malta Shipbuilding? Why Medigrain? Why PBS? By implication this question means why not the whole central government administration? Why not Water Services Corporation? Why not Freeport? Why not the multitude of authorities who pay themselves private sector salaries for doing a public sector job? I am sure we have among us many Grassos (Richard Grasso was the former chairman of the NYSE) if everything is put in relative proportions.
So let’s indeed stop interim solutions. Let’s look at the problem in a holistic manner and propose real solutions that though painful are perceived as fair and equitable. Maybe a good starting point would be if the Prime Minister were to brush up his reading of a report which “seven wise men” had prepared for the Labour government in 1997/98 and which the Prime Minister had abused so much by instigating the resistance to change that he is now trying to convince us is necessary.
I cannot agree more. I have been hammering at it for years that the country was expensively seeking interim short-sighted patch-ups which would in time make real lasting solutions far more painful and difficult. What marvels me is the coldness with which the Prime Minister now admits it. He makes it sound as if he is a new-comer trying to put right what predecessors had fouled. He seems to forget that he has been running the show for 16 years almost uninterruptedly. What marvels me is the gentle strokes with which interviewers accept these sort of replies rather than demand why we had to come to this stage.
One must not forget that barely six months back in pre-election mode the same Prime Minister was proclaiming solemnly that all was fine and dandy. That State finances were on solid foundations. That everything was sustainable and that EU accession would, on its own produce an influx of new investment which will spur economic growth without having to take hard cost cutting measures.
I should repeat an analysis I had written on May 9, 2003, in this paper’s sister daily where I had analysed Dr Fenech Adami’s performance on the 16th anniversary of his first election win on 9 May, 1987. I had stated that:
“Sixteen years of his administration has given the country a false sense of prosperity and well-being built on very shaky foundations that future generations will struggle to maintain as they will have to make good for past excesses. These can best be signified in the three major structural problems which will come to face us with daunting if not horrifying stark reality.
“Firstly we have the fiscal deficit problem. We still await publication of the December 2002 figures. November 2002 figures showed that in spite of Lm21 million cosmetic exercise related to MIA privatisation we were Lm30 million off the mark as at end November. Stories about attempts being made to shift expenditure from year to year to hide the extent of the deficit have been made and never convincingly refuted.
“Be what it may such problems cannot be solved by cosmetics or creative accounting but by sustainable economic growth and serious expenditure controls.
“The environmental faults we have developed are seriously threatening sustainability of economic growth and our quality of life. Waste mismanagement, air and sea pollution, uncontrolled urban sprawl and horrific road and transport problems are a distasteful legacy of an unbalanced administration where short term party political priorities were given precedence over the real national interest.
“Lastly the unfunded pension liabilities which have been allowed to accumulate whilst taking political advantage from short-term over-consumption which fuelled and extended the pension problem, is becoming a reality that can no longer be postponed.
“I have a theory that Dr Fenech Adami’s recent electoral success is totally due to Labour’s unwise decision for the EU issue to be decided through an election not through a referendum. This has placed Dr Fenech Adami in the strange situation where the more he was criticised on the domestic front, the more his re-election prospects improved through the support of the many who thought that the country could no longer do without the externally imposed discipline of EU membership.
“This is fine for Fenech Adami as a party leader. But not so fine for a statesman who should have delivered the country in a good state to decide on EU membership on its merits and not through default because of the imbalances his laissez-fair style allowed to materialise.”
I am pleased that Dr Fenech Adami is evidently sharing my own assessment of his performance and that he seems determined that in the last phase of his political career, free from the pressures of seeking re-election, he seems inclined to put the country back on a sustainable track to make up for past excesses. I think he owes this much to the well-meaning citizens of this micro-State who have chosen EU membership not as a panacea for our ills, but as a external source of discipline to force our political leaders to take decisions and initiative meant to serve the long-term sustainability of the catch-up process of our standard of living to EU averages rather than to serve the short term interest of politicians to acquire or remain in power.
Hard decisions await us. And hard decisions will find great resistance for acceptance especially by those who were consistently led to believe that the free lunch could last forever. To facilitate acceptance, solutions have to be and be perceived as being fair.
I strongly feel that by tackling the issue sectorially the fairness dimension will be missing and resistance will be fortified possibly to the point of aborting the process of change. The obvious question is Why the drydocks? Why Malta Shipbuilding? Why Medigrain? Why PBS? By implication this question means why not the whole central government administration? Why not Water Services Corporation? Why not Freeport? Why not the multitude of authorities who pay themselves private sector salaries for doing a public sector job? I am sure we have among us many Grassos (Richard Grasso was the former chairman of the NYSE) if everything is put in relative proportions.
So let’s indeed stop interim solutions. Let’s look at the problem in a holistic manner and propose real solutions that though painful are perceived as fair and equitable. Maybe a good starting point would be if the Prime Minister were to brush up his reading of a report which “seven wise men” had prepared for the Labour government in 1997/98 and which the Prime Minister had abused so much by instigating the resistance to change that he is now trying to convince us is necessary.
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