The Nationalist leaning ‘free’ press knows no limits.

The other week Martin Schulz, leader of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, sent Dr Alfred Sant a warm and very kind letter in which, apart from wishing him a speedy recovery, also conveyed the message that fellow Socialist leaders were looking forward to meeting Dr Sant regularly during EU Council meetings in the near future, in his new capacity as Prime Minister of Malta, after hopefully, having won the forthcoming general elections.

In view of the tone and content of Schulz’s upbeat, optimistic and sincere letter to Dr Sant, some of the English language newspapers in Malta found an easy way out in covering the ‘event’, without disclosing the contents of the Schulz letter.

What they did, quite crudely, was carry Alfred Sant’s letter of thanks to the Socialist Group Leader, without having even had the decency to reproduce the contents of the Schulz letter itself.

To put it in a more simplified manner – they chose to gag Martin Schulz, to make sure his positive message did not come across to Maltese and Gozitan readers, as well as to any foreigners who might have picked up the newspapers in question.

Memories of Pravda indeed!

Austin Gatt’s

subliminal message

Minister Austin Gatt simply cannot resist the itch to relegate every government press conference and media release into an occasion to hit out at the opposition.

He did this when launching the Maltapost IPO, without having had the decency to admit that we had opposed the original privatisation of Maltapost because of the poor international track record of the New Zealand company that was taken on board, and he also availed himself of the announcement of a prospective new investment in the Freeport to misleadingly claim that the MLP is against the Smart City project. He did this again when attending GO’s investment launch in a second submarine cable!

His agenda is simple – almost bordering on the politically simple-minded; to portray the Malta Labour Party as a technology averse organisation. So much so that in a recent interview in another newspaper’s economic magazine he actually accused us of suffering from acute “technophobia”.

The moment we criticise any initiative of his, he instantly dismisses it as proof of our anti-technological bias.

We seem to have reached the stage where criticising Austin Gatt has suddenly become tantamount to being against technology itself.

Labour’s best answer to all this mud slinging and negativism is our vision statement on ICT which was drawn up in the Summer 06 – almost a year and a half ago.

In spite of the Minister’s attempts to portray us as an inward looking party, it is worth recalling that while Labour had first come up with the idea of branding Malta as a centre of excellence in ICT by ‘selling’ it as The Intelligent Island, Minister Gatt only weeks ago decided to take a leaf out of our book by coughing up The Smart Island concept. Nothing wrong in that. But what he did was not only a feeble attempt to catch up with us, but also a flagrant act of plagiarism. Particularly since the Egyptians have set up various smart villages which are nothing but cores of ICT activity!

Meanwhile, if the minister has the ICT sector so much at heart – which I do not doubt – what is holding him back from supporting Labour’s proposal for a consensual approach as is done between both parties on financial services? Surely criticising the odd government measures’ timing and modalities should not break such consensus or render it unattainable.

When silence is not golden

Forget all about Austin Gatt’s quick fire response to criticism of his ministry’s activities or policies. He, or his cronies, still have to reply to the Times editorial of 18 December, 2007 wherein they tore his recently published national ICT strategy for Malta apart under the title – Wanted: less style, more substance!

Their main accusations were the following:

•Had the IT Ministry left out certain buzzwords the really important targets would have been easier to identify.

•A major shortcoming of the strategy is that it reads as one long mission statement rather than providing any serious analysis on training needs and wage forecasts, let alone on costs.

•Nuggets like ’36 per cent of the investment projects attracted by Malta Enterprise were in the ICT field’ should have provided answers as to how many jobs did that generate and what was the impact on the GDP as well as how did it affect value added?

•On SmartCity it has been said ad nauseum how many jobs it will create but how about a detailed breakdown of what these jobs will consist of?

•Alas, the 87-page document contains more rhetoric than substance, and thus, the country must wait to see what the benefits will be.

Had Labour passed such remarks we would have been instantly rubbished and accused of having turned green with envy, as well as of having tried to scare foreign investment away from the ICT sector.

But this was no shot in the dark.

A leading and respectable software company’s managing director, who holds no Labour brief, was recently asked to comment on SmartCity. He said that he thought it was a positive development for Malta, although in his opinion its impact has yet to be determined, since much will depend on what type of companies will end up making use of it.

All this shows that less hype and self-congratulation by the government would make the analytical debate about our ICT industry far healthier and more objective!

e-mail: [email protected]

Leo Brincat is opposition spokesman for Foreign Affairs & IT