I partially agree with Carmelo Vella (Disastrous performance, TMID, 22 September) that Malta needs a fresh start, but before I get to that part, I would like to make some comments paragraph by paragraph about Mr Vella’s article.
Paragraph 1. I am quite certain that the Prime Minister will criticise Opposition Leader Alfred Sant much less if the latter stops treating us like imbeciles. He is full of rhetoric but hardly any substance. In politics one never sits back and enjoy. The PN does not work in fits and starts. It has a plan, it follows it and beyond that it has a long-term vision. Dr Sant has none of that. A Nationalist government gave birth to an Independent Malta 43 years ago, another Nationalist government enabled Malta to join the European Union (full – not a junior partnership(?) – not Switzerland in the Med) and is now getting ready to join the Eurozone. The Nationalist Party is consistent, lays its plans years in advance, and reaches its goals.
Paragraph 2. Name one failed project. Delays, yes, but then better delay completion than do things in a hurry and end up with projects like the St Paul’s Bay bypass, constructed under a Labour government and ending up having to be rebuilt after several cave-ins due to lack of proper foundations. Done in a hurry; the Nationalist government had to reconstruct it at a much higher cost than 25 years ago. Remember the hastily tarred and gravelled roads just before elections in the 70s and 80s? Remember the hasty mass employment which saddled subsequent governments with paying for no work done, simply to boast that unemployment had gone down? Does one even want to compare those ‘jobs’ mainly to party-faithful, to the high paying jobs for properly trained workers of today?
Paragraph 3. A cabinet reshuffle is the sole decision of the Prime Minister. Dr Sant does not figure in it at all and giving ‘advice’ to Dr Gonzi to reshuffle his cabinet is just another non-issue Dr Sant is known to conceive from time to time. In three years, Dr Gonzi turned around an overburdened economy into a sustainable economy worthy enough to join the eurozone. If it were for Dr Sant (before he made one of many U-turns) we would not only be out of contention for joining the eurozone, we would not even be members of the European Union!
Investment minister – SmartCity Malta – Lufthansa – egovernment (2nd best of 27 EU member states). How about tourism and fisheries – not bad eh?
Paragraph 4. Another case where Mr Vella wants something for nothing. He does not want to pay the surcharge on water and electricity forgetting that in the last six years the price of oil has gone from US$16 to US$82 a barrel.
By the way, the $16 per barrel price was at a time when Dr Sant was Malta’s shortlived Prime Minister. And talk of corruption! Mr Vella must either be very young or he is conveniently forgetting things. But that is another long, long story and space does not permit here.
Paragraph 5. This is the part I fully agree with what Mr Vella wrote. Malta does need a fresh start. It needs a fresh and serious Opposition Leader who will refrain from twisting the truth, have a clear vision which will make Dr Sant’s U-turns obsolete, no innuendos and alleged and imaginary scandals, no mudslinging and yes, since he is such an advocate of new faces, why does he hang on? Even here he changed his mind not so many years ago, having decided to resign but changing his mind three days later after a couple of his friends begged and implored him to stay(?!). Rather than produce a six hundred page “Road to Utopia”, why does he not reduce it to six pages of facts and figures crammed with information with the source of financing?
Yes, Malta will need a newly elected revitalised Nationalist government to continue uninterrupted with the projects on hand guaranteed to proceed without second thoughts halfway through completion and with proper use of some of the EUR855,000,000 which the European Union allotted to Malta for the next seven years.
It needs a serious Opposition Party which is capable of distinguishing between national and party interests. Clearly, only the Nationalist government satisfies this criteria and it will be the Nationalist Party which in the next election will secure the confidence of the clear majority of the voters.
Oh, by the way Mr Vella – just between us – we need a government for all, not just for the Nationalists and certainly not just for Labour supporters – but that’s just between you and I.
Joe Martinelli
London, Ontario
Canada