Many centuries have passed since the Byzantine Empire crumbled under the incessant attacks of barbarians. Byzantium played a role in history that must not be underrated.

Between ancient and modern European civilization, the Dark Ages intervened – and the Byzantines (and the Mohammedans), while lacking the intellectual energy for renovation and survival, preserved the apparatus of civilisation: books, education and learning.

Thus was the West stimulated when it emerged from barbarism. On retrieval, that store of knowledge preserved by Byzantium stimulated new thought and initiatives – scholasticism in one case and the Renaissance in the other

Living legend

Byzantium is now a memory, but the complicated system of policy introduced by Diocletian, and improved by Constantine, with its underhand and devious characteristics, continues to be a living legend.

Images of Byzantium are evoked each time modern communities find themselves face to face with secrecy, simulation and evasion, where one would expect transparency and dialogue in public affairs.

The legend lives on, particularly in the vast area under the influence of Byzantium and its peripheries

Malta is in that zone.

Our politicians and media often sing the praises of transparency and dialogue. Just as often, they close a blind eye to the game of wheels within wheels and, many a time, they are the participants.

Wily politicians do their own thing. Public opinion and its supposed leaders give the impression of being mesmerised and incapable of demanding the data that would enable them to act independently.

Formidable problems

At this moment in time, Malta is faced with formidable problems, as it stands on the threshold of the global market, spurred as it is by fast technological change and cut-throat competition.

In this scenario, Malta needs dynamic, imaginative, go-getting leadership – one that is capable of coping with the demands of change, and synchronised with the electoral mood.

Malta must live by what it earns if its fragile economy is to survive. It needs more and more foreign investment. It must restructure its economy and be more outward looking. It must raise productivity and open up new sources of foreign earnings.

Unless it does so, and does so successfully, Malta will come to grief under the crushing weight of its mounting burden of debt and its servicing costs. At all costs, the economy has to be turned round in such a way that we will stop spending more than we are earning.

This is not a form of newly-acquired wisdom. A queue of experts has been stating the obvious well before Malta achieved independence. Local politicians in office, permanent administrators and captains of industry have been saying the same thing all along.

It is one thing to preach prescriptions and to draw up blueprints. Performance is another. Too many politicians look the other way.

Questions

Is it not remarkable that successive administrations have been fiddling with plans for the Cottonera and other areas of Grand Harbour, and with plans for a modern crafts village at Ta Qali, for years and years without delivering the goods?

Is it not embarrassing to recall that an administration, which has been in office for practically 20 years, has not come round to restoring Valletta to its pride, considering that it is a World Heritage Site and a potential money earner as a tourist attraction?

Meanwhile, the economic engine stutters, the haemorrhage continues, the environment is despoiled and neglected, and the politicians, prodded on by civil servants, overspend – and the taxpayer foots the bill.

All this is happening while the incumbent administration claims to be achieving records and performing miracles, while the taxpayer feels the pinch.

Taken in the mass, all these considerations ought to concentrate the minds of all concerned. The politicians should rise to the challenge, make up for lost time, and make amends for years of idleness and serious shortcomings.

The media ought to demand transparency, ferret out information, and identify the nature of Malta’s predicament.

Fundamental issue

Politicians with a Byzantine frame of mind will resist change. They have flourished by upholding the status quo. They hope to wield power in their respective domains as long as the submissive tax-paying electorate pays to make good for the sins of omission and commission.

The basic fundamental issue facing Malta is one of leadership and policy update. This problem has yet to be addressed with detachment, and from the correct perspective.

Instead of coming up with new policies, the incumbent administration has relied on its five-seat parliamentary majority to press on with a tax-spend-and-borrow programme and to implement it with an old team. That same team held their parliamentary seats more by Mintoff’s coup de main in l998 than by its own feats.

This team has proved to be impervious to change - and the need of the moment is more than cosmetic change.

That is why new blood is needed in the Nationalist Party. It must be oriented to project itself beyond the faithful. It has to be dynamic and metropolitan, and ready to tackle the nation’s problems frontally.

Creating diversions with the intent of distracting public opinion will only make matters worse, because this will stoke the fires of polarisation when, in fact, the magnitude and the intensity of Malta’s immediate problems call for a meeting of minds.

My point is that the PN failed to think afresh. The PN never changed its tune, apart from making new expensive promises

Meanwhile, it is the taxpayer who foots the bill and bears the burden.

In the final analysis, it is only the electorate that can rid itself of this yoke.

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