Last week was a true case of “open season” between Nationalist ministers and MPs in at least three different instances, as can be confirmed by the proceedings in the House of Representatives.

Early in the week we had a so-called sparring match between former Finance Minister John Dalli and Parliamentary Secretary for Finance Tonio Fenech over the proposed budgetary measures linked to the property tax regime.

What ostensibly started it off was Nationalist MP Dalli’s proposal to the government that an assessment of property values by a government architect should start being made when a promise of sale agreement was signed and before the actual transfer took place.

All this in order to avoid unnecessary problems. The former minister stated that this was needed particularly since the tax penalty on the price difference was due to rise.

Tonio Fenech shot down the proposal without much hesitation, claiming that although he agreed with the suggestion in principle, no changes could be made at this stage before a detailed analysis of the implications was carried out.

Mr Dalli was not to be defeated. He continued insisting, somewhat persistently, that he could not understand the PS’s position in the sense that it was difficult to understand how it was a problem to give an assessment of the value after the promise of sale but it was not a problem after a sale took place, when the procedure was the same.

Mr Dalli’s thoughts went much farther than that, as he claimed that this provision was playing too much with the country’s taxation system.

He even accused the PS of destabilising the system by going back on previous norms whereby the principle had existed until now that losses could be evened out with profits.

John Dalli actually stated that it seemed people did not know what was happening, so much so that it was like raising tax in a substantial way.

When former Minister Dalli kept on driving his point home, he was shot down point blank by Tonio Fenech, who stated that he did not agree with the point being moved and thus moved on to other business.

Mr Dalli must have felt somewhat consoled by the fact that the business bodies backed his call for property tax amendments.

All this made me wonder.

How frequently does the Nationalist Party Parliamentary Group meet? And when it does meet don’t they discuss the legislation that is due to appear before the House?

It seems that the Nationalist Party is in free fall and they not only have a communications problem with the electorate but even among themselves.

The dust had hardly settled when former Parliamentary Secretary Nationalist MP Antoine Mifsud Bonnici availed himself of his intervention on another bill before Parliament to take exception to remarks made by the Social Solidarity Minister Dolores Cristina, primarily about what he understood that she had stated regarding the ethics and integrity of general practitioners in the medical profession.

He criticised the minister’s proposal by stating that it was unacceptable for him as a doctor that certificates by an applicant’s doctor or specialist would now not be accepted and that the applicant would start being examined by a doctor in a state hospital.

He even accused the minister of introducing discrimination among doctors, something which the Medical Association of Malta never accepted.

The Nationalist MP further accused the minister of introducing ideas underpinning certain changes which would or could place too much red tape on the services in question, arguing that someone who has been paying taxes throughout his life did not expect to find excessive red tape in the event that he or she needed a service.

To be fair to the minister, she claimed that Dr Mifsud Bonnici had quoted her out of context but one could easily tell the bad vibes that prevailed in the House at that moment.

To add insult to injury, we then had Minister Austin Gatt lashing out during question time at the Office of the Prime Minister for blocking the recruitment of a number of operatives for a call centre to service calls for Enemalta and Water Services.

In an interview in another newspaper, former Minister Dalli, when speaking of Malta’s diplomatic and commercial approach to Libya, lamented that although Foreign Minister Frendo is trying, “we have to do more”.

It was further proof that Mr Dalli is not happy with the current state of affairs and the pace of developments as dictated by the Maltese side.

No wonder your sister Sunday publication’s editor, in his parliamentary reports for TMID, called last week the ‘horribilis’ week for the government.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the government is not only failing to get its act together but, even worse, at a point in time when it is trying to project itself at its best during the already launched local councils election campaign, its communications strategy is falling apart and ending up in tatters for all to see.

India and China

If there is one thing about which both parties seem to agree in Malta this is that India and China are destined to be the two new major powers, not only in Asia but also globally.

I recommend very strongly a special supplement on India recently carried in the highly stimulating The New Statesman, which described it as ‘a new sort of superpower’.

Although much of India might remain completely untouched by the astonishing boom that the country is experiencing, it is an established fact that India is already on the verge of overtaking Japan to become the third largest economy in the world.

No wonder that it has been publicly announced that the US government has decided to shift some of its key diplomats from more traditional Western postings to such emerging countries as India, China and Latin America.

One might still find large pockets of poverty in India but its economy is destined to overtake that of the US by roughly 2050 while, along with China, it is expected to dominate the 21st century.

When I mentioned that India is already on the verge of overtaking Japan to become the third largest economy in the world I forgot to mention one important point: that China is already the second largest.

The major difference between these two “major” powers is that India exports services, while China exports goods.

To cite an example, only seven million Indians are employed in the formal manufacturing sector compared to more than 100 million Chinese.

Proof that Bangalore has become the Silicone Valley of the 21st century is confirmed by the fact that roughly 40 new foreign companies set up business in the country every month.

Driven by the outsourcing boom, demand for office space is so high that buildings which usually took 18 months to build must now be completed in 10 months.

While all this happens in this globalised world, we have just come to learn from Minister Gatt that the allegedly overmanned Enemalta is not even capable of producing enough people who can man its planned call centres.

How do we expect to catch up?

Leo Brincat is the Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and IT

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