Has the opening of the doors of the Auberge de Castille to all citizens with a grievance, on top of the sustained work of so many spin-doctors, tilted the scales of public opinion, when weighed against the slackening pace of economic growth and industrial production, the shrinking scale of politics and of some particular politicians, and the waning national energies?

On the approach of every headache-

ridden morning, or worse still, at the dry-mouthed hour before dawn, many citizens are realising that nothing has changed, that nothing is better for Malta since it joined the European Union. The lesson is beginning to sink in that a nation that chooses to live by fanciful EU propaganda, shall perish by the trade gap, the failure of national purpose and the loss of ground to its commercial rivals.

The “money no problem” years

The past is haunting the Gonzi administration as few have ever been haunted before. It seems as though the ghosts of the “money no problem” years will never be laid. The buried feel-good factor of the Fenech Adami years is restless in its unquiet grave.

The spin-doctors are pretending that the feel-good factor is not dead, but only sleeping. The more sophisticated among them are suggesting that although the rate of economic growth has been all but arrested, and although all signs of buoyancy have vanished, the substance has not. The economy is on track, they insist, without any evidence being adduced to prove it.

As was inevitable, the past has risen to take the present by the throat. The evidence emerging from Europe, and from the National Statistics Office, speaks with more persuasion than eloquence. This explains the rude awakening of electoral opinion.

The ruling administration has been in office since l987 without interruption but for a short 22-month intermission between l996 and l998. It has been living well beyond its means as if there was no tomorrow.

It raised tax levels, it started to sell the family silver, and it borrowed merrily.

Suffice it to say that, in l986, Malta’s national debt amounted to a mere Lm63 million or l2.29 per cent of GDP. By 2003, it soared to over Lm1,200 million, or 7l.l3 per cent of GDP, and rose precipitously to reach Lml,387 million at the end of March of this year.

The government had other substantial resources at its disposal, running into hundreds of million liri thanks to the Italian Financial protocol.

Where has the money gone?

Where has all the money gone? What do we have to show for it?

It serves no useful purpose if Dr Gonzi proceeds to make a prognosis at successive sittings in the Auberge de Castille, without a proper diagnosis.

The symptoms of what has developed into a serious disease is the attitude which considered the Exchequer as a bottomless pit, with commitments for recurrent and capital expenditure, not only where there was no reason, but also where rhyme was out of sync with reality.

The cost of government escalated systematically. In a number of areas it ran out of control. The government transport system defied all the norms of good management and proliferated to assume the magnitude of an outsize monster. The problem of recouping outstanding revenue arrears continues, to this day, to be a festering sore – no less than Lm363 million in revenue arrears were outstanding when the Auditor-General submitted his last annual report (Arrears of revenue due to the state in l986 stood at Lm88 million, and at Lm128 million in l994).

Madcap schemes

Things would have turned out much worse if a number of madcap schemes, initially announced with much fanfare, had not been abandoned in time. The most spectacular was the spectacular Renzo Piano plan for Valletta. Subordinate to this were separate, but smaller, projects for the approaches to Valletta, for transforming the former Royal Opera House, for the building of an administrative centre that would have gobbled up Independence Arena at Floriana and a Gozo airstrip – to name but a few.

The government’s recent capricious decision to purchase property in Brussels, without prior consultation and authorisation by Parliament, suggested that no lesson has been learned.

If folly were grief, the Gonzi administration ought to be weeping, instead of holding séances at the Auberge de Castille.

Although the government did not exercise the necessary diligence to keep the Maltese electorate au courant with the running state of play, its performance had been under scrutiny and has been measured by the yardstick of the Lisbon agenda targets.

Lisbon scoreboards

During the past three years, the Lisbon scoreboards showed a drop in Malta’s GDP per capita from 77 per cent in 2000 to 71.7 this year, and a further projected decline to 70.7 per cent next year.

Per capita productivity has declined from 95.2 per cent of the EU average in l999 to 84 per cent last year, and is expected to go down further to 83.3 per cent next year.

The rate of growth of Malta public debt was the steepest in the whole of the EU and now hovers at 73 per cent of GDP.

The Lisbon agenda aimed at a 70 per cent overall employment rate by 2010, and a female employment rate of 60 per cent. Malta’s workforce slumped to 54 per cent last year. The female participation rate was 33.6 per cent in 2003 and increased imperceptibly to 33.63 per cent last year.

(The latest Labour Force Survey revealed that a total of 10,966 were unemployed as of last January).

Although Malta’s spending on education, in percentage terms of GDP, was similar to that of most European Union member states, only 47.9 per cent of Maltese youths were furthering their education beyond secondary level, compared to the EU average of 76.4.

The number of graduates in science and technology actually declined, from 3.9 per 1,000 in l999 to 3.1 per 1,000 in 2003.

Greenhouse emissions declined by l0 per cent throughout the EU. In Malta, they went up by 11.5 per cent during the last decade.

No small challenge

It is true that Malta joined the EU half way during the terms of the Lisbon agenda, but the government had applied to join the EU in July l990. Although it has been insisting to this day that the economy was “on track”, it did not take effective measures leading to convergence to EU standards before or after the Lisbon agenda. If it has, the results speak of failure in the most sensitive areas.

To extract the ailing economy from the cancerous situation that has prevailed for so long is no small challenge. It is not one that can be tackled by the Government single handed, least of all by pirouetting at the Auberge de Castille

All hands must assemble on deck, but they need leadership. And there is no time to wait.

Ultimate collective

responsibility

Although a credible initiative must first come from the government, with its cohort of bureaucrats and experts – all of whom ought to be accountable for their performance – the ultimate onus of sorting out the malaise rests squarely on the shoulders of Members of Parliament.

They have the collective responsibility for authorising public expenditure, for the proper scrutiny of the administration of public funds and for bringing the government down to earth, each time it is carried away by flights of fancy.

Above all, they ought to be sanguine in their determination to root out corruption, and to derail the gravy train that provided joyrides for the few and impoverished so many law-abiding taxpayers.

If the government has been paralysed or impotent in the course of the past years in office, many MPs have been comatose or hypnotised by their party machine.

In the prevailing circumstances, these MPs are not likely to have many more chances to redeem themselves – which is why they must get cracking without more ado.

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