The question is – are we kissing goodbye the better or the worse half of the legislature?

It depends on what criteria one uses to measure the better or the worse. I go by substance, and experience leads me to conclude that a legislature is normally split into two halves. The first half is where the medicine is applied; where the unpopular decisions are taken to address the country’s problems; where the government is generally less popular as it suffers the mid-term blues and the electorate feels the pinch of the tough medicine without as yet perceiving the benefits of the cure.

Memory flashes back to the Labour government of 1996-1998 where it only had time to give account of the first two years during which it was constrained by the inherited problems, whose fatherhood entirely belonged to the outgoing PN administrations of 1987-1996. One can well remember the very sensible measure of applying a token 50 cents charge on free medicine prescriptions, not as a fund-raising measure, but purely to discourage waste in free medicines being claimed unnecessarily.

Surely one can easily recall the unjust criticism against such a necessary and sensible measure, with Labour being accused as having lost its social conscience. Because the Labour government’s life was cut all too short, as it was forced to face the electorate with a record of pain and no gain, the measure was aborted and the medicine problem still remains unaddressed today.

The government’s medicine bill is going through the roof. Bills due for medical supplies to local importers mount up unpaid and importers have pooled together to issue a common legal warning to the government, urging it to pay its dues. This is a quite unprecedented event which indicates that government finances are scraping the bottom of the barrel and that any claimed improvement in them should be taken with a pinch of salt as unpaid bills continue to mount unrecorded in the government cash-based accounting system.

In the meantime, the Central Bank regularly reminds the government in official speeches by its Governor, and no doubt even in private meetings, that it can only meet its euro targets for reduction in public deficit to within the Maastricht criteria if a system of co-financing for public health services is introduced.

Co-financing, in simple words, means that the public health service would not remain free as at present, but users of the service will have to start making some contribution, both to ease government expenditure as well as to remind consumers that non-payment does not mean it is free. There is no free lunch anywhere and someone somewhere is paying for free medicine, whether it is through our current taxes or through accumulating debt which burdens future generations.

Memory also flashes to the re-structuring that the Labour government of 1996-1998 wanted to do in the student stipend system for our tertiary education. Knowing full well that that system was neither sustainable nor fair, Labour wanted to shift part of the stipend payments to a loan system which students would pay back to society during their post-graduation economically-active life.

The UK introduced similar measures by demanding co-financing top-up fees for tertiary education to keep it sustainable. Labour wanted to keep it entirely free but simply shift part of the stipend to a recoverable loan. All hell broke loose and the PN, in spite of their blame in constructing an unsustainable stipend system, was scandalised at Labour’s loss of social conscience for attempting to do what was right and necessary.

Here we are seven years later and the monetary authorities regularly have to remind the government that if its finances are to meet the criteria for euro adoption, it needs to restructure its cost of educational services.

My experience shows that if such measures are not taken in the first half of the legislature, it will be difficult, unlikely and almost impossible for the government to take such decisions in the second half. As the general election starts getting visible on the horizon, with electoral districts boundaries revised, agreed and all, the government will become increasingly sensitive to its political fortunes and will start doing what is popular rather than what is right.

So if in the first half of the legislature we have not taken the tough measures that our economy really needs and without which we cannot make it to either joining the euro or to achieving successful and effective economic re-structuring, why is it that the government is equally suffering mid-term blues? Why such blues, if we have not taken the pain and consequently cannot expect the gain in the second half of the legislature?

The simple answer is that this is a fatigued administration that has over-promised and under-delivered. The first half of the legislature, for all the promises of the new incumbent at the helm, will be more remembered for faux pas like Malta House in Brussels rather than for any new energy in truly addressing our chronic economic ills.

A typical case of such fatigue is the administration’s inability to appoint a new Ombudsman when the current incumbent has exhausted the two terms permitted by the Constitution. What efforts were made to find a name acceptable to parliament to avoid leaving gaps in this most respected public post in society?

Why should these efforts, if indeed any were made, not be made visible to the people to give us an account that our parliamentarians and the executive are doing the minimum expected of them?

Is it reasonable to expect a better half for the remaining time of the current legislature? I think it is more reasonable to expect more of the same.

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