Almost to coincide with the mid-term review of the Lisbon strategy, the GWU recently published in comparative form its recent negotiation proposals, those of the other unions and the employers’ associations as well as government’s counter-proposals.

What I found most shocking indeed was that at a time when the World Economic Forum has found that our national spending on R & D is badly lagging behind, it took the General Workers Union to reveal that in spite of its proposal that employers should contribute a percentage of their profits to re-train their workers, as well as to invest in research and development as well as innovation, government merely offered to levy Lm5 per employee from each employer per annum.

Calculated on a national level, this would have amounted to a mere pittance – that would have left us stranded in the quagmire we presently happen to be in.

The most pathetic aspect of this government is that it has no creativity and vision.

Compared to the drive and dynamism which the Nationalist government showed in 1987 upon assuming office, this time it is coming across as both flat and jaded, bereft of any ideas or enthusiasm, merely going through the motions as if these were household chores which a maid simply had to perform.

To make matters even worse, most ministers give the impression that they happen to be in suspended animation, operating in a state of limbo, completely out of sync with one another. This suggests that we have a Cabinet of Ministers where every minister allegedly or apparently has his own personal agenda – that of political survival out of fear of the political tsunami that will overwhelm them, come the next local and general elections.

What lies behind the out of court settlement?

I had long been tipped off that the people involved in the alleged duty-free diesel scandal were boasting publicly that not only would they get off scot-free but that they had confronted the powers-that-be to make sure that they would not be arraigned in court.

According to Parliamentary Secretary Tonio Fenech, my “informers” have proved to be right, since it was confirmed in parliament only last week that this scandal has been settled out of court by fining the people concerned.

This is a nasty precedent that tends to encourage contraband and smuggling as well as tax and customs-duty evasion. It runs counter to the Tax Compliance Unit remit we had heard so much about in past months. It is surprising how such unions as the Union Haddiema Maghqudin, that have made such a song and dance about tax compliance, did not say anything about this out of court settlement.

Which poses the questions:

Who were the people involved in this scam?

What influence do they have on the government of the day?

Are any of them connected with the running of any government or parastatal agencies and/or operations?

Who suggested that the matter be settled out of court?

Who negotiated the release of a certain company’s diesel-carrying trucks from Hal Far?

What stage had police investigations reached when such a decision was taken?

Why was the Prime Minister always so evasive when we tabled parliamentary questions on the issue, by claiming that a solution was not yet in sight by the time of the summer recess, in view of the complexity of the whole issue?

When the whole story is revealed, we will realise that government was literally sitting on dynamite when tackling this “explosive” issue!

Local supporters of the British far right

When I recently returned from Strasbourg, I found out how the Nationalist Party and the MLP weeded out fascist-leaning elements from their ranks, although by the time of writing I am not aware that the Nationalist local councillor involved has had his membership card suspended or withdrawn.

What many fail to realise is that there are other local elements that support the far right British party, UKIP.

The New Statesman, which can hardly be dismissed as a Blairite clone, recently revealed how UKIP and the fascist British Nationalist Party (BNP) are far closer in their views and much more popular with British voters than most of us realise. In fact it recently claimed that they are part of the same phenomenon as they both tend to express solidarity with racism and xenophobia.

The BNP and UKIP are bitter rivals, but they draw from the same reservoir of support, and opinion polls and focus groups suggest they are linked in voters’ minds.

Between them they won just over 21 per cent of the total vote in the European election, and exit polls showed that about half of those who voted BNP in the local elections voted for the UKIP in the European election.

In the London mayoralty elections, nearly half the BNP voters gave their second preferences to UKIP and nearly a quarter of UKIP voters cast theirs for the BNP.

Those Maltese and Gozitans who unwittingly support the UKIP for “other” reasons should keep their eyes open, particularly after their leader, Robert Kilroy-Silk, decided to keep his distance from them – dismissing them as a silly lot.

Nevertheless, we should abandon the belief that far right parties in the UK and their associates in Malta attract only a lunatic fringe.

A recent study in Britain shows that although this level of potential backing has existed since at least the late 1960s, when Enoch Powell gave his “rivers of blood” speech, the falling support for the Labour-Conservative duopoly in Britain is no doubt contributing to this negative development.

Tackling the Middle East in Strasbourg

Having recently been appointed vice-president of the Middle East sub-committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, after having been nominated by former Greek Foreign Minister Pangolos, the task ahead is daunting. I, and the other officials and members of this committee, have been entrusted with the assembly’s task of ensuring that we develop a tripartite forum allowing parliamentarians from the Knesset, the Palestinian Legislative Council and the Parliamentary Assembly to sit together on an equal footing with a right to speak and make proposals for the sub-committee’s agenda and actions.

The decision to invite Palestinian President Abbas to address the Council’s April session is the first positive step in the right direction, although we intend to keep an even keel between Israeli and Palestinian political representatives.

e-mail: [email protected]

Leo Brincat is the main opposition spokesman on Foreign Affairs and IT