This government prides itself on its foresight and sense of vision. But this surely is not the case when it comes to formulating its energy policy. Last week – although I was away from the island, we came to learn that the Malta Resource Authority has drawn up a draft report on energy strategy. Thank you, for small mercies!
Such a strategy should have been formally adopted and put in place long before the government embarked on its crisis management exercise to try and counter the spiralling costs of fuel as well as the inefficiencies of Enemalta.
It is useless for Nationalist propagandists to argue that when Labour hiked water and electricity bills upwards the price of fuel was less than a quarter of where it stands today.
Labour’s exercise had been carried out primarily to shore up Enemalta after the accumulated losses resulting from an inefficient Nationalist administration that had almost brought it on the brink of bankruptcy.
These inefficiencies had been borne out by a study I had commissioned from Price Waterhouse Coopers in December 1996, which had laid bare the poor and creaky set up at Enemalta from a managerial and logistical point of view.
Before a Labour cabinet took a decision to raise water and electricity rates it had also been strongly urged to do so by an independently commissioned report drawn up by another leading local auditing firm. The Enemalta situation was so severe and acute that when the new rates were announced we were actually rapped by the IMF because they felt that the rates should have been hiked even further!
What this government always fails to do is to refer to a cabinet memo.
Then Minister Charles Buhagiar and I had drawn up on the basis of a John Cassar White and Alfred Mifsud report of summer 1998 to readjust these rates with a view to mitigate some of its impacts on society. Rightly or wrongly, the Cabinet had decided to put our recommendations on hold because they were too close to the general elections.
When the Nationalists were elected in September 1998 their “new” rates did not differ considerably from our scaled down proposals and revised rates.
Meanwhile, rather than indulging in partisan politics in both his press conferences, parliamentary statement and newspaper ads, one would have expected the Industry, Investments and IT Minister to identify the tangible efforts by his ministry to put the energy corporation back on track.
The government’s reaction to the energy crisis was such a knee jerk and belated reaction that one only has to look up two particular quotes:
Austin Gatt – The Sunday Times (3 July): “if government wants it can absorb the rise in the international price of oil.”
Lawrence Gonzi – Il-Mument (31 July): “we have such an economy that it can manage to counter the tidal waves and difficulties that we are facing, among which feature the difficulties caused by the increase in the price of fuel.”
Hopefully, by the time this article appears in print, the Budget 2006 will have shed some light on how the government intends to restructure Enemalta by ironing out its chronic inefficiencies, for which particular blame should be put at the door of former Minister Josef Bonnici who kept Enemalta for so long without even a CEO and who had a great aversion to oil hedging.
So much for the NSO’s independence
When I was minister responsible for the National Statistics Office, one cardinal norm that had been quite rightly pressed upon me by government bureaucrats was that I should not publicly refer to NSO figures before these were made officially public by the NSO themselves. The same applied to the retail price index figures measuring cost of living upward trends.
This government seems to think otherwise. So much so that the Prime Minister chose to use a party platform – the party’s half yearly council meeting – to refer to economic growth figures which had not even yet been made public by the competent authorities.
Although I guess these figures will have featured in the Economic Survey tabled in Parliament yesterday, by the time this article has been written – Friday 28 October – the figures were still a closely guarded “secret” except for our publicity-hungry Prime Minister who is bending backwards to try and create a feel good factor in spite of his abysmal failure to do so, so far!
Neither Dylan nor Boy George
One does not have to be either Bob Dylan or Boy George to realise that the Where’s Everybody clan never had it so good than under this administration.
Although I did not claim irregularities in the awarding of government tenders, it would be interesting to find out how much they have netted through their government tenders and television programmes under a Nationalist administration.
That they more than often show a pro-government bias throughout their TV programmes might be purely coincidental! The same can be said for their judicious choice of debating subjects. As well as for those they habitually tend to gloss over. Rock on, Lou Bondi.
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Leo Brincat is the MLP’s Main Spokesperson on Foreign Affairs and IT.