This past week, our media was made to report various blasts by the Opposition Leader on colleagues of mine, be they ministers or parliamentary secretaries.
The one that caught my attention was the one concerning Tony Abela. In the same breath that Labour accuses us of being aloof from the people, Dr Sant makes a media show of a letter which in reality shoes how a cittadin was being seen to and served.
It is true that Labour does not like anybody getting attention, but Dr Sant himself proved that the Nationalist government is looking after its citizens, much to his anger.
This, coupled with an impressive list of things done in the third year of office by the government, should and will eventually give the Maltese people a sense of security for the future.
What has been pleasantly surprising is that the deficit of the country has remained under control. This has an immediate effect on our daily lives. It frees up money for the government to invest in other areas. Take education for instance; a visit to the new school at Kirkop would give you enough tangible and concrete evidence of a caring government.
As I always say, we do not project this marketing on a daily basis, which would make people fed up. So, it’s the anti-propaganda machine that gets the first success. On the other hand, Labour spouts the bad news, the doom and gloom. How pleasant it is to relive those days of gloom, over and over again (sic).
How nice that, with one’s eyes wide open, one votes for the Labour party and buys his own daily dose of gloom and doom. D and G are normally a good brand name associated with good living. In Malta, we have a D and G of our own. Not that anybody in Europe would like to import doom and gloom, but some Maltese might like it.
Another point that has been repeated a number of times was the 6,000 odd German clients who wanted to come to Malta, but could not find any flights.
Although I imagine that such an operation would have merited a few flights, I recently found out that two Munich flights, programmed to cover the summer season, were not being sold as they were not programmed by tour operators.
I also learnt that some Scandinavian flights have been cancelled or amalgamated for lack of sales, while others on the French market, especially in the Paris area, have been cancelled. This should have provided flight possibilities for people from Germany to come here.
Our national carrier, on the other hand, has a seat occupancy rate that hovers around the 70 per cent mark, and I see that 30 per cent of seats again remain empty. What a pity that seat levels are happily kept at 70 per cent, and that no proactive remedies seem to be launched. The results will show that we have missed out when we might not have done so.
With government committing itself to spending millions of liri yearly, and with the markets in Europe growing, we somehow remain static.
Markets grow, but here again we tend to have individuals, particularly in Scandinavia and in Romania, who join others who are somehow given control over that foreign market.
This means that a country’s tour operators, that normally offer holidays to Malta, at the same time have to shy away from Malta as seats are controlled in various ways while prices and conditions differ.
With so much to offer, with our good hotel rates, our performance can be so much better, especially with the good work force we have.
Media accusations do not get us anywhere. Tour operators read newspapers, and form opinions. A really thorough soul-searching exercise, coordinating all the players, should be carried out and we can then adapt accordingly.
A final note. At the moment, due to a solid financial base and fewer people unemployed, a study is being conducted on the income tax situation.
This is being carried out so that Malta and its people can have a more justifiable, fair and overall healthy situation.
Robert Arrigo is a nationalist MP