Imagine that at any time in the last few weeks you were stuck in traffic listening to the news on the radio. Well, you hardly need a Shakespearean imagination. On each one of the last weeks, you were stuck in traffic listening to the news on the radio. These are some of the things you heard.
The MLP floats the idea of increasing social security contributions, presumably to improve government finances. Radio 101 goes on the warpath. And yet, in the same bulletin the same station extols the PN government for its massive and comprehensive restructuring exercise, presumably to improve government finances.
Next item. The government-sponsored Chalmers report makes a strong case for rethinking the financing of tertiary education. At the same time, the PN media makes a huge song and dance over Labour’s idea of making tertiary level education graduates pay back what they took out of taxpayers’ coffers. Confused? There’s more. Super One interviews university students about whether they want to pay for their education. Guess what the answer is?
The PN government announces that gas production and distribution will be liberalised by the end of the year. At the same time, a Gozo Channel monopolistic practice straight out of the Middle Ages is being investigated by the EU.
Next item. Government announces its target to hook up 75 per cent of Maltese households to the Internet. At the same time, however, illiteracy is sky high and the vast majority of the population has never been to the theatre in their life. Not to mention that many of the same households are without gas and some cannot afford the kerosene they used to heat their homes with.
Next item. Labour, who were against EU membership and are now in favour, criticise every government move to bring Malta up to EU speed. At the same time, behind their oodles of political rhetoric about “what they would do” there is either a blissful political vacuum or else policies which flagrantly run counter to EU goals, standards and directives.
Next item. The Archbishop calls on the media to search for the truth with integrity and a sense of Christian values. At the same time, when I invited the Curia to send an official representative to a Bondiplus panel on a proposed bioethics law – the single most relevant piece of legislation to Christian values in decades – it declines.
Next item. Alternattiva Demokratika, opt to officially call themselves the Green party in the European tradition. And yet, their leader comes out guns blazing against the upgrading of the Sant Antnin recycling plant with EU funds and according to EU directives.
The traffic starts to crawl forward. You turn off the radio and try to make sense of it all. What are the PN and the MLP arguing about? Beyond, the obligatory political posturing, is the MLP offering concrete policy alternatives? Is the Catholic Church still worthy of any attention at all?
It is becoming increasingly clear that there is a sclerosis in our public debate, particularly its political dimension. It is as if the political parties are acutely insecure about their place on the European political map.
Caught between a traditional way of doing politics which no longer works and a new one which is still nebulous and untested, they run around like headless chickens in search of who they are. In this quandary, they reach out for the security blankets of the past: daily political and media wars over inessentials. Issues of global import are turned into parochial ones. And, worse still, parochial matters are inflated and bloated to the size of global ones.
Whether we like it or not, the real world of economics and the reality of EU membership are catching up with us. The change that has to take place is thorough and affects almost everything we do and how we do it. There is no point trying to pretend that old-style politics will in anyway soften the blow. If anything, it will make it worse. The politics of the past is becoming irritating to wider swathes of the population.
In practice, this means that the government needs to be more forthcoming, concrete and candid in its statements over what must happen. It should stop trying to give the impression that all is quiet on the western front. It is not and no one believes that it is. Daily news bulletins choc-a-bloc with Ministers telling us how good they are only serves to rub more salt into the wound.
On the other hand, if the Opposition wants to be the next government it cannot keep talking endlessly without saying anything at all. The Malta Labour Party is a political party, not a debating society. It exists to win elections and then to implement its political programme. Its mission is not to be in Opposition but to be the next government because they are better than the present lot. For the MLP to assume that they will automatically become the next government by sitting tight and not committing themselves to anything is not short-sighted politics but even worse electoral strategy.
What we hear on the news today is not the future of politics in Malta. And thank God for that. It is certainly not the future that people, who voted for Europe across the great political divide, voted for.
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