Living Contradictions

 The Malta Independent - Friday Wisdom

Regular readers of my column probably judge that I am nagging too much about the broad chasm between flowery intentions expressed in nicely bound reports and hard reality.

I can’t help it, as the gap between intentions and reality is getting offensively wide. The government seems to know what it wishes. It has no idea of how to make it happen. But it expects our congratulations purely for cleverly expressing its wishes and has no absorption capacity for criticism about its inability to work out a plan on how to realise them. So criticism in this sense is generally ignored and where it hurts so much that it cannot be ignored, the message gets sidelined as the messenger suffers derogatory innuendos.

The Prime Minister, in one of his recent press conferences, had no kind words for columnists like yours truly. The offence of folk like me is having no inhibitions at being critical, citing facts and figures, and showing aversion to being impressed by vain wishes. My judgement is based on hard reality.

So you can imagine my surprise at receiving a personalised letter from the Prime Minister enclosing a copy of the A Better Quality of Life – 2006-2010 Pre Budget Document. I had already publicly expressed my views on the said document which was available from the government’s website. I hardly needed another copy. But in his covering letter, the Prime Minister told me that:

“We want to discuss with you the choices that will guarantee a future of excellence for you and your children. Government’s decision to publish the Pre-Budget Consultation Document was prompted by the firm belief that your contribution will help us prepare a better budget. Your company’s commitment is decisive for Malta to excel.”

What a living contradiction! Being criticised in public and congratulated in private irritates me. Sending me personal letters extracted from most impersonal computer data-bases reinforces my suspicion that the government is more interested in pretending that it means to do something rather than in actually doing it.

If this were a new government that could disclaim responsibility for the problems we need to address, than the approach could make sense. But for goodness sake, this is a government that has been in office since May 1987 when East Germany was still communist and the Berlin Wall was standing tall as hard evidence of the failure of communism which was soon to come.

My commitment has been there without interruption. What is missing is the government’s own commitment to address the problems at their source and to desist from the shameful practice of pretending to solve problems by writing a cheque from public funds leading to further taxation and debt, in the process gaining for itself political patronage at the expense of tomorrow’s well-being.

Let’s take another contemporary example of how the government has no idea of where it is going and is wrapping itself in contradictions. The Malta Tourism Authority (MTA) is conducting a broad-based re-branding of the Malta tourist product. The exercise will take several months to conclude and will cost much, much more than a cup of coffee. This is a much-needed overdue exercise. We cannot continue to make false claims that back-fire when we do not deliver what we promise.

We cannot offer sea and sand as if we were the Maldives when tourists here will have difficulty in finding a free square metre at our scarce sandy beaches. However, we can and should promote our uniqueness, our being so near and yet so different. Our smallness which enables tourists to see in less than one week what in other countries would take several weeks. Our varied and rich history, our bastions, our churches and our village traditions – festas and fireworks included. Our versatility in meeting the different scene locations required by creative film directors. Our ability to speak and teach various languages. Our beautiful and historic harbours and the magic scenery of Gozo and Comino. We need to build an aura around our pre-historic monuments and around sites linked to mythology and famous legends.

Yet while we are trying to re-brand ourselves on who we really are and what makes us different from competitors, in the same breath the government is proceeding with plans to deface us by going for golf courses which can sit comfortably in Dublin or Surrey but can hardly be a distinctive feature of a Mediterranean sun-drenched island. What goes for St Patrick and St George does not necessarily go for St Paul.

If we cannot be led with clear determination and sense of direction, we will continue to spread our resources all across the board with conflicting pressures from different directions forcing us to continue running on the spot.