Is there a limit, one wonders, to the inexhaustible incredulity of the average citizen of these Islands?

Ever since that fateful day on 7 April, l942, when the then Royal Opera House was wantonly destroyed by the Luftwaffe, one administration after another solemnly undertook to fill the void.

Well over half a century has since frittered away, during which architects have been invited to compete in international competitions, and parliamentary debates have been held where several appeals were made for something to be done to restore to Valletta its once-prized cultural centre.

Yet the last vestiges of the old Opera House continue to stand out like a sore thumb or, better still, like an abandoned bride, to the embarrassment of millions of visitors, not to mention the dying generation of Maltese opera-goers of pre-war days.

Is this a symptom of an incorrigible Mediterranean complex, highlighting, at one and the same time, a propensity for gullibility, patience and a tendency of the part of public opinion to believe that the moon is made of green cheese?

Here are good grounds for arguing that this is so. After all, it is less than 13 years ago – on November 24, l992 – that the then Finance Minister, John Dalli, delivered his first budget speech and set clear-cut objectives for the five years that were to follow.

Famous last words

He ‘decreed’ that the government’s deficit was to be reduced to a level below three per cent of Gross National Product (GDP). Unemployment was to be restrained to a level of four per cent. The public sector workforce was to be whittled down to between 25 and 30 per cent of the gainfully employed population, and the so-called ‘welfare gap’ was to be contained and reduced. Famous last words.

The blare of propaganda trumpets faded in no time, and a monstrous structural deficit dominated the scene causing more havoc and worry than the Luftwaffe. The number of business casualties since than has been even bigger than in l942.

This did not deter Minister John Dalli from projecting his thoughts into the future for the second time, and to “take the country out of the depression it had sunk into.”

In his 1999 budget speech, he orchestrated a repeat performance. Without batting an eyelid, he mapped out Malta’s future for yet another five years and claimed that, this time, there was to be no default.

GDP growth was to ensure that tax revenue would accelerate by the year 2004 (it did) and that this new source would be augmented by new taxes and intensified tax enforcement (it was). As a result, John Dalli predicted, the structural deficit would evaporate in time by the first year or so of the EU enlargement (it did not – but his language was grist to the PN electoral mill at that point in time).

Mr Dalli may have been entitled to the benefit of the doubt if his performance, the first time round, did not prove so utterly off the mark.

His repeat performance exposes the real politician who, first lost his clothes, and subsequently, his fig leaf.

Ill-led bureaucracy

I submit that it is the ill-led bureaucracy that exposes, more than anything else, the soft underbelly of successive Maltese administrations.

It is by now a proven fact that successive Maltese governments have been handicapped by the lack of sufficient bureaucratic support at the top. Many a minister has been let down by inefficient civil servants whose irresponsibility and dereliction of duty was spotted, time and time again, by the Office of the Auditor General.

Some politicians in office could have sought expert advice for their own safety, but they thought they knew it all, and behaved as masters of all they survey.

Is it not outrageous that outstanding arrears of revenue due to the government have snowballed to reach a level of Lm360 million by the end of 2003 (Lm l09 million of these were estimated by the Auditor General as ‘not collectible’)?

The Auditor General’s report for l995 had stated that outstanding revenue arrears registered in l987 amounted to Lml28 million. Instead of being reduced, this figure has practically tripled.

The General Financial Regulations, which have the force of law, lay down that heads of department are to report to the Accountant General any case which might entail revenue falling unduly into arrears, and that a copy of such report is to the forwarded to the Accountant General.

On various occasions, the latter has attested that no such reports were submitted.

Disconcerting evidence

The fact that responsible top civil servants treat the Office of the Auditor General in this cavalier fashion is disconcerting enough. It may be even more disconcerting if this resistance is deliberate, for reasons that could best be left to the imagination.

There are millions of liri in national security contributions, withheld by employers from their employees, which have not passed on to the government. Substantial amounts of Court fines have yet to be collected. Other millions of liri were known to be due to the MDC as unpaid factory rents.

Deficiencies in the control and use of government transport are as consistent as they are notorious. Inventory control is ‘often’ lax.

The above speaks for itself and is eloquent enough. It highlights inefficiency as well as lack of discipline at the bureaucratic level. Worse still, it reflects incompetence at the level of the political executive.

It serves no purpose having an eagle-eyed Auditor General’s outfit, willing and able to do its duty, when the bureaucracy drags its feet, or is out rightly unequal to its task. And when there is nobody at the top to bring order where there is chaos.

Unless there is the political will in parliament to put the house in order, the drift continues and the plague spreads.

At all costs, Malta must be spared that scourge.

When the House comes round to discuss next year’s budget in a few days time, it would not be amiss if it focuses on this fundamental issue as a matter of priority.

Unless satisfactory solutions are identified and set in motion, it would be difficult to persuade the Brussels hawks and watchdogs that Malta will comply with the Maastricht criteria in short order.

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