“If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.”
Famous words said by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and very relevant to the situation we are facing in Malta today where we have a Prime Minister who promised everything to every one when he knew only too well that he could not keep his promises, that he could not deliver what he told us he could deliver. Now to add insult to injury he is denying that he ever committed himself to deadlines when the whole of Malta knows the contrary.
It is most unfortunate to say, but we have a Prime Minister who cannot be trusted. A man that is nothing more than a marketing manager, a very good one at that. But he is not worthy of being at the helm of this country because albeit all the gimmicks and the fireworks, we have seen no concrete plans. It has now also transpired that the road plan that he boasted so much about on the run down to the last general elections was just a figment of his fertile imagination and an uncanny way to win votes.
This country deserves much better. Our citizens deserve someone who seriously and concretely knows where he wants to take them, someone who is unafraid to take unpopular decisions if these decisions are for the good of the country in the long-run, someone who is not in power for self-glorification but for the good of a nation. After a year and a half of socialist government, we have started to realize that for Joseph Muscat leading this country is at par with playing a strategy game on a personal computer, the sad difference is that unlike the game, in real life, mistakes are irreversible and the consequences will be carried forward for many years to come. It is really high time he grew up and faces the stark reality.
The hype is quickly fading and many of those who after such a high end campaign rightly so believed the Labour leader’s promises and entrusted him with their vote and consequently their country with such an overwhelming majority, are now facing the grim truth of everyday life and getting to terms with the fact that not all that glitters is gold.
Beneath the calm exterior, the flamboyant catch phrases and the suave jargon, there is a cabinet in chaos. As Nationalist Party leader Simon Busuttil said, there is no other way to describe this government but as a government built on a lie. Notwithstanding the majority that this government enjoys in Parliament, there are pressing questions that the Prime Minister needs to answer and he and his administration had better start answering these questions quickly.
The case of the power station is but one of a series of promises that have so far failed to materialize, not because of some technical hitch but because there had been no serious planning, no in depth studies and no due diligence. There were only a series of rash decisions taken without considering the long term effects, there was only and insatiable urge to take over the helm of the country, a type of greed that has been manifesting itself openly with appointments that are directly linked to militancy with the Labour Party, jobs for the boys even when these boys have a less than clean police conduct and have been found guilty of criminal activities, and the girls even when these girls happen to be the wife or the ex-wife of a minister.
After a year and a half under Labour, we have yet to see serious policies taking effect, we have instead been presented with schemes that made the whole of Europe react negatively and made us blush, and to add insult to injury all this is taking place while our Prime Minister lightly dismisses all the criticism directed against him and his team as irrelevant and instead chooses to bulldoze all that dare oppose him. We have an administration that is dishing out advisory posts and consultancy positions as if they were leaflets, when at the same time the number of unemployed is on the increase and with six thousand two hundred and twenty three workers being made redundant in the last eighteen months. This insensitiveness turns to pure undiluted arrogance with a meagre cost of living increase of 58c. This is another way for the government to tell us to shut up and sit in our chairs. In face of all this, one cannot but wonder about the silence emanating from the General Workers Union’s headquarters, but then again we all know where the allegiances of the GWU rest and how easy it is for its secretary general and its whole executive to go in hibernation when the Socialists are in power. This is not the way forward. This is not the kind of politics that a country needs in order to flourish. We need a government that plans its work and works its plan after serious consulting and after taking everyone’s view into consideration. We need a Prime Minister that is honorable enough to shoulder responsibility. After a year and a half it is clear that the man at the helm does not have a plan to work upon or the criteria to lead.