Attempts to minimise the devastating impact of the leaked internal PN report on their electoral defeat during the European Parliament elections have been unsuccessful.

Many Nationalists are up in arms how such a document found itself in the hands of a General Workers Union leading daily newspaper.

What was even more preoccupying was the fact that the report betrayed great disinterest by a number of Nationalist backbenchers in collaborating with the rapporteurs in question by helping unearth the true causes of the resounding defeat that the Nationalists had just suffered.

While the MLP had given all parliamentarians and national executive committee members the chance to scrutinise the internal report that it had commissioned following the electoral defeat of 1998 it seems that the members of the Nationalist Party executive were merely given an oral executive summary of the report’s findings without being given access to the report itself.

For a report that has been classified as “top secret” since September 2004 to eventually see the light of day in spite of the Nationalist Party’s attempts to keep its findings close to their chest must be worrying indeed for those who went out of their way to treat the report as “strictly confidential”. The claim that the report was kept secret at the rapporteurs’ own request is irrelevant to the issue.

If the poor response of the Nationalist MPs was a matter of concern for the party officials it was even more worrying that an almost absolute majority of their village and district club officials did not even bother to come forward with reasons explaining the electoral defeat of 2004.

No wonder Marisa Micallef recently wrote about the prevailing apathy in Nationalist Party ranks.

This apathy has been having the better of them for the best part of the last two years, showing without any doubt that Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi failed to set any houses on fire with his ostensible charm offensive.

It transpires from the leaked report that the investigative committee met 17 times and received two SMS messages as well as 15 telephone calls and 28 communications by e-mail or by letter.

One cannot blame the members of the commission for complaining that they were expecting far more cooperation from the employees and paid up members of the Nationalist Party.

The rapporteurs ended their investigation on 15 September 2004, which then led to their presenting a final report to the secretary general of the Nationalist Party.

Even more damning were the reasons given by those interviewed for the Nationalists’ electoral defeat.

No wonder that the Nationalists are trying to give the impression that their ‘Iva nikbru fl-Ewropa’ campaign should not be seen in the same light as a general election.

One of the most interesting aspects of the leaked report was that the erosion of Nationalist votes has been taking place progressively over the years.

The Nationalists’ only face saver was that people voted for them in 2003 because those opting for EU membership had no option other than to vote PN, otherwise it is likely that they would have come a cropper on that occasion too.

The report found that contrary to the position of the MLP during the European Parliament election campaign there was little contact between voters and Nationalist MPs and MEP candidates. The same situation had prevailed when local elections had been held previously.

Bearing in mind that the PN faced the electorate with the slogan ‘Kapaci, Konsistenti u Kredibbli’ (Capable, Consistent and Credible) showed even more clearly how distanced the PN was from reality.

The most damning conclusion of the report was that the electorate had lost their faith in the Nationalist Party because it had promised things that it knew that it was unable to deliver.

Which goes to prove how spot on Labour was when we told you so!

What an update!

The update of Malta’s Convergence programme 2005-2008 made interesting reading on various counts. While the government has been pressing the MLP to take a stand on the pensions reform issue it is still holding back from doing so itself. This was recently confirmed by the PM when he stated that the draft legislation will not be published before summer and that the bill will not be legislated upon before the period towards the end of the year.

Reading through the update one could not be blamed for reaching a different conclusion since it stated that it was the intention of the government to communicate its decisions “in the near future” and thereby embark upon the implementation phase of the reform of the pension system.

What point is there in harping upon the importance of entrepreneurship promotion and the encouragement of creativity and innovation when it is common knowledge that we are lagging behind in these particular areas.

While growth forecasts have been revised downwards we were told that it is only through economic growth that the goal of social inclusiveness can be sustained in the years to come. All this when our GDP is expected to grow by 1.1 per cent in 2006 and 1.2 per cent next year.

Government’s plans to keep on raising the fuel surcharge to 84 per cent within the next two years contrasts sharply with the report’s prediction that although oil prices are assumed to continue increasing in 2006 they are expected to stabilise in 2007 and maintain the same level in 2008.

While government is committed to reduce its inflation to achieve Maastricht criteria we are now told that inflation is expected to rise further to 3.1 per cent in 2006. But the real litmus test will be whether government will manage to reduce the general government debt to 67.3 per cent of GDP by 2008 as well as to slash its general government deficit ratio to 1.2 per cent of GDP by 2008.

It will be interesting to compare and contrast these budgetary projections with the results achieved over the coming months.

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Leo Brincat is the Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and IT.