From Mr Pawlu Aquilina

The Labour Party is still a long way away from modern and decent governance. While accepting the fact that they have been in Opposition for a good number of years, they were entrusted for just over 10 years to adopt Labour governance at local level through the local councils.

During the 20 months or so they governed the country, the Labour administration introduced no less than 33 new taxes. They know nothing better except to tax the people mercilessly. This is what they are doing and how Labour-led councils have taxed the people during the last two financial years.

During the last Local Councils Association meeting, Labour mayors had the cheek to criticise the Ministry and Department of Local Councils for introducing the Petition Board, which so far has revised and/or annulled a good number of warden citations that were unfairly given to the public. Some of the Labour mayors insulted the Petitions Board by calling their decisions shameless, ignoring the fact that the Petitions Board was formed in Parliament and the board members were approved by both sides of the House as the Minister for Justice explained.

But for Labour only one thing matters – that of taking power at all costs, no matter how many fines are imposed, no matter if the wardens were right or wrong, the important thing is to get the public complaining against the government. This was the Labour way doing things before and still is now in Labour-led councils and will be in the future if Labour regains power, God forbid.

We all remember how the Labour Party used to behave in Parliament when they it to organise the public to fill the public galleries and shout abuse at PN Members of Parliament, especially the PN leaders. We are witnessing, albeit on a smaller scale, all this in local council meetings were Labour have a majority.

Nearly every time there is a hot issue on the agenda the first thing Labour-led majorities do is to organise a mass of Labour supporters attending council meetings to show their support. This happened in San Gwann when the mayor called for a vote of confidence in himself, and in Marsascala when there was the hawkers’ dispute. This is the Labour way of governance that is all they know, they haven’t and will not change.

Than we have the MLP system, a system comprising of lack of respect by ignoring the rules and regulations of good governance.

At Paola, a Labour majority, the number of employees (all Labour supporters) exceeds the number of employees the law permits by no less than nine. They should have a maximum of four but have 13.

At Pembroke, which has a Labour majority, the police arrested a Labour councillor some months ago on suspicion of fraud, connected to the council’s award of a tender. The case is still being investigated and it would be imprudent to divulge more at this point in time.

At Hamrun, for two whole years, the council declared an expense of over Lm14,000 in its accounts for the cleaning and maintenance of bays (bajja) like Mellieha Bay; to have the expense reduced to just over Lm1,000 a year after the case was brought to light in another section of the press and the mayor declaring that the maintenance of bays was only a misposting.

At Tarxien the road maintenance tender at the village was awarded to the Gudja mayor’s company.

At Mtarfa during the previous legislature, a tender that was originally valued at Lm270 ended up costing the council Lm11,632, an astonishing 43 times more than was originally planned, was brought to light by the council’s auditors.

At Sta Venera two clerks had to leave their job because the Labour majority made their life a misery. They were later reported to the police by the Labour majority for allegedly cancelling some programmes from the computer.

And the story continues mercilessly, all that matters for them is that Labour keeps the majority.

At Dingli about Lm80,000 was spent by the Labour-led council on the construction of the council’s small offices, which was more than four times as much as what the PN council spent to build the whole Civic Centre in Qala.

These are the same people who continuously and relentlessly throw mud and accuse the government and ministers of overspending public funds and of nepotism.

This is why Labour will fail once again.

Pawlu Aquilina

Coordinator

PN Local Councils