What passes for political debate in this country of ours at times beggars description.
Right now we are in pre-electoral mode and that, it seems, means the parties bashing each other as if they were on a Punch and Judy show.
Complicated by the dire straits which the media in Malta finds itself in at present, means that the public always gets to hear what the politicians have to say, but they all seem to drown each other out, so in the end the public is left with nothing and ends up voting according to its tribal loyalties.
The political panorama following the breakdown of the social pact discussions, following the Budget last November, and preparing the ground for next month's local council elections seems to have the government side on the defensive and the Opposition very much on the offensive. Over the past days, the government side tried to go on the offensive, and that has ratcheted up (or down) the level of political debate, but has not shed any light on the situation, on what needs to be done and what is being done. All we hear is the noise but no clear signs come through.
The whole debate post-Budget seems to have centred almost exclusively on the change regarding those public feasts which fall on a weekend. An interpretation of this could be that in our straightened circumstances, having as many feasts as possible seems to be what many people are concerned about (and may also be an indication of the extent of the black economy in our midst), anger that since such a measure hits mostly the employed workers, they are the real losers.
A less partisan view would be that such a move, while welcome in the interests of the economy, will not on its own deliver what the supporters of this decision claim it will. As any enterprise which starts clamping down on such things well knows, what the workers lose in one way, they will regain in any other, preferably sick leave and the rest. After all, this is also the country where the coming Spring kacca days will leave industries and government departments alike depleted of its workforce.
This Punch and Judy type of political debate camouflages reality: each side if in Opposition belabours the other, but then each side in office proceeds to do what reality demands. There is nothing like reality to infuse a government with a sense of what needs to be done. Where they differ is the extent of what they decide to do and the efficacy of what they do.
The two sides are in broad agreement that the main issue is tackling the structural deficit, and in their own ways they both tried to tackle it when they found themselves in office. Why then do they raise hell when they find themselves in Opposition and stoke up the people's anger when they will have to take roughly the same decisions if and when they find themselves in office?
The two sides also agree that regaining competitiveness is the second most important strategy for the country. They agree that we are living today in a free market world and that there is no returning to the protectionism of old, that in today's liberalised markets the Malta product has to compete against the Chinese product and retain its selling edge just as much as the Maltese tourism product has to compete against the far cheaper Tunisian or Turkish tourism offer.
There are, to be sure, shades of differences between the parties, but one must compare like with like: party in government against party in government, not party in government against Opposition. Talk comes cheap when you are in Opposition and comes back to haunt you once you are in office.
Over the past year, the government has been working on one tack, which has now blown up in its face: the struggle to conclude a social pact. We told it that it was wasting its time, as anyone else could tell it. After a whole year of discussions, and lately of constituted bodies daily ascending and descending the steps of Castille, there is nothing to show.
The government is thus now forced to change its tack: it seems to think that being what it calls decisive is the thing now. So we have the public holidays issue, and so many other issues, from the dockyards to Gozo Channel, from tackling Maghtab to cracking down on social assistance evasion.
All this is good but it is one of the preceding government's own decisive decisions which should show it the way. In another page we highlight the HSBC profits and how they were obtained: through keeping a zero cost increase policy over a period of years. There is no other way that an organisation, a business, an enterprise, a government, a country can prosper unless it tackles its costs and brings them under complete control. Whenever a cost rises, it must be brought down, or else it must be compensated for with cuts in another area.
Of course a country is not a bank, but a country then has so many other means for keeping costs down and for increasing revenue that a bank just does not have.
Another decisive direction the government must take was highlighted in last week's issue: the strong interest shown by some of the world's top brands for areas around the Malta Shipbuilding site and for Malta Shipyards sites as well. The government was wise to set up a task force to push through these interested applications and we urge it to make haste and pull out all stops so as to attract more and more foreign direct investment to Malta. And to prove wrong all those who say that Malta has lost all its attractiveness for new business.
A third sort of decisiveness which people look for in the government is to ensure that whatever it decides is put into practice, and when people look for evidence that the government can really get its act together, they find evidence of solidity and concreteness, rather than all the evidence of unfinished business, humming and hawing, and blaming this or that. The country has been promised a perceptible improvement in the quality of life but everything is still work in progress, whether it is the new hospital, the new roads, the improvement of the educational system, right down to improving the gas distributor system, to the foibles of the Enemalta system, and the interminable wait to have applications approved by MEPA.
After spending six months discussing in vain, the government now finds itself engaged in an equally futile electoral campaign for basically small change, a local council election win (or rather a less traumatic defeat). It should have spent its time better, and it still should spend its time better.