Selling the dream of EU membership has proven to be much easier for the Nationalist government than delivering the benefits emanating from such membership. Almost four years after membership many are understandably rather disillusioned as to how little has changed in their life as a result of this major development in our country’s political life.
The truth that needs to be repeated constantly is that life is what we make it. This applies to the political life of our country too. The cost of living explosion, the miserable state of some of our roads, the environmental sores that disfigure various areas of the island, the very poor results achieved in the education field, the inadequate medical services, and the abuse of power by some politicians and their cronies were, and still are, with us despite four years of membership in the premier league of European nations.
But as a country we can do so much better. The almost continuous 20 years of Nationalist administration has brought a sense of lethargy in the governance of this country, a streak of arrogance in ministers who are taking their hold on power for granted, and a sense of helplessness in ordinary citizens who feel impotent in the face of so much mediocrity in the leadership of the country.
Now that we are members of the euro zone we have to make sure that productive investment really starts to flow to create job opportunities for our young people. But even here we need to roll up our sleeves and make sure that we wipe out the scandalous record of having the highest number of young people who leave the education system without any skills or qualifications.
This cannot be done by inventing photo opportunities for the Prime Minister or the Minister for Education who now seem to have discovered the solution to this failure in our education system. No amount of rhetoric about building new schools, revising the curriculum, and naming new colleges will bring about the much-needed change.
We need to identify the root of the problem, and the indication is that the first area we need to address is the attitude of some of our families. When a family is struggling to survive in an increasingly difficult economic environment, it is hardly reasonable to expect the education of children to feature highly in such a family’s list of priorities.
After years of giving little importance to consumer protection and control of unjustified price hikes, the Prime Minister expects Maltese families to be forever grateful to him for announcing that the NECC will now be converted into a consumer protection agency. What we need is the political will to use the authority given to the government through the ballot box to curb abuses and profiteering attempts by some unscrupulous operators in our economy.
The biggest obstacle that can keep our country from performing better is the sense of fatalism the Nationalist government is trying to sow in people’s mind on the eve of the moment of truth when ordinary people are given the weapon that can bring about change.
They perpetuate the fallacy that, however badly they have abused people’s trust, they are still the natural party of government and that Labour cannot be trusted. They have already resumed the well-tried strategy of demonising the Labour Party leadership, following a brief lull brought about by the Christmas festivities and Dr Sant’s illness.
But our families believe that we can do better, if only we have the guts to shake off the paralysing fatalism about the future. This country has a bright future if we all understand that we are in charge of our destiny, and that we are prepared to guarantee a better future for ourselves by changing the current government.
We can indeed do better, and the first step to do that is voting for change.
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www.mangioncharles.com
Dr Mangion is Acting Leader of the Opposition.