Forgotten Message

The Malta Independent - Friday Wisdom

I well remember the successful strategy adopted by Labour during the first term of Alfred Sant as Leader of the Opposition between 1992 – 1996. It was a strategy of non-confrontation to the execution of government’s policy. Instead it focused all scarce resources on building incrementally alternative policies, which would, in the fullness of time, come next election, persuade the majority to back a New Labour government.

This strategy had two advantages. Firstly it allowed government to carry on with its work, in the process making many mistakes, like introducing VAT in the year before the election rather than in the year following the election, without having anyone else to blame for its failings. Secondly it gave the PN government a false sense of security and over-confidence thinking it had a weak opposition that could be taken for granted.

Little did government then realise that the non-confrontational style of Labour’s opposition 1992-1996 was allowing it to build its internal structures ( the New Head Quarters, electoral research and capillary planning to get out the vote on street by street basis) which together with its fresh look and no-nonsense policies offered a better alternative to a fatigued government which had executed the two full terms normally accorded by the electorate before desiring a change at the helm of the country.

It worked. Labour’s 1996 election victory went beyond our wildest dreams and the PN’s worst nightmares. The problem is that Labour has forgotten the message. Rather than build on the successful strategy of 1992- 1996 Labour is somehow gripped by the failed policy of negativism it adopted between 1998-2003.

This is hard to understand or explain. Take the Sea Malta affair as an example. Criticising the government for the lack of transparency in the privatisation process and for not getting the best value for a national asset is certainly an obligation of the opposition, which if done properly and effectively would be appreciated by the public at large.

Nobody gives government much credit for its knack to soot rather than burnish its own assets in the process of privatisation. This has happened again in the Sea Malta process when the responsible Minister publicly stated that he does not agree that the market value of a vessel could go up rather than down, thinking that a commercial vessel is like a private car the value of which depreciates every year.

The business world teaches that the market value of most assets used to generate revenues largely depends on the magnitude of revenues they can generate and that it is quite normal for ship values to increase if the freight rates go up due to shortage in shipping capacity caused by increasing international trade.

However, stating that when and if re-elected a Labour government would create another Sea Malta does pretty little to gain the confidence of that sector of the electorate that is tired of the PN but is not persuaded that Labour can offer better.

The world is moving towards leaner and meaner governments whose primary role is to ensure proper regulation for the conduct of fair and competitive business and whose prime function is the creation of a fiscal, regulatory and economic environment that stimulates and attracts private productive investments. Government’s creating new enterprises to compete as an operator with private businesses does not sit well in the globalisation model we have no option but to embrace. Taxpayers unavoidably interpret such policies as an attempt to protect inefficient work practices that can only survive at the taxpayers’ expense.

In this case its ‘privileged’ GWU partner is not helping Labour’s tarnished image. Admittedly the GWU has been caught between a rock and a hard place when the sea faring employees, enjoying the benefits of uncompetitive work practices that the new owners want to eject, would not budge their non-consent in spite of the overall majority of employees being in favour of the new arrangements. In such a case when it is impossible to find a compromise pleasing everybody it is obvious that the will of the majority has to prevail. In trying to find an impossible compromise satisfying all sides the GWU finished pleasing no one and played into the hands of the new owners who are now getting a carte blanche to start a new operations picking and choosing employees on their set terms rather than taking on the whole Sea Malta operation as a going concern respecting the seniority benefits of employees.

In all this there is one sure winner - the PN government. The avoidable confrontation about Sea Malta has buried the public perception of the hefty increases in utility rates, which have disappeared from the headlines in less than a week in spite of their harsh effects on consumers. When Labour announced analogous utility increases in November 1997 the PN and its friendly media kept the issue alive right until the election of September 1998 depicting Labour government as cruel and without a social conscience. What a difference in media management!

An awful budget for 2006 that fails to deliver what is most needed, economic growth, passes almost as a non-event and without any liability to the government’s and the PM’s personal popularity which according to recent surveys published in the media are still superior to both MLP and the Leader of the Opposition respectively. The Sea Malta affair has provided the government with a unique opportunity to deviate attention from issues that could cause it a liability and to the depict Labour and the GWU as the best reason to stick to the PN warts and all.

Labour should not forget the policies of success of 1992-1996 rather than cling to the policies of failure of 1998-2003. The price of forgetting would be prohibitive not only for Labour but also for Malta who desperately needs a credible alternative to a fatigued PN government.