Sir Thomas More became immortal as “A Man For All Seasons”. Our Prime Minister will be remembered as “A Man For Two Seasons”. Before the general election he is the good guy heralding the Seven Years of Plenty. He presents the people with scenarios of fat cows grazing in rich green meadows and endless fields of gently waving golden sheaves of corn. However, after the election, it is another season. The Years of Plenty for everyone are gone and we are faced with the Seven Years of grim reality. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. No fat cows for the people. No endless fields of golden corn. His electoral promises and self-assurance have melted away in the scorching heat of a reality he cannot hide. We find ourselves under grey autumn skies that herald the coming of a cold bitter winter.

This has been the story of the post election period. Prices were guaranteed only up to March. Immediately after, with the election in the bag, prices shot up beyond the reach of John Citizen. Fuel costs were controlled only up to voting day. Then we are told that international oil prices have peaked at $170 per barrel so a whopping 95 per cent price hike is imposed. Now oil prices are coming down and have stopped at a low $120 level. However, the Man for Two Seasons has not acted according to his promises. Enemalta needs to replenish its coffers.

And what about his electoral pledge to lower income tax ceilings? It’s on the back burner now. He is too busy hiking fuel, and electricity and water prices, to think of that pledge. There is always time. What better time than later during his mandate when another election is on the horizon? But today it is not my intention to narrate the sufferings of a gullible people. I am going to concentrate on the “Passion and Death of the Yard Worker”.

It is the sad story of a vanishing Yard. Before every recent election the Yard worker was promised a better future, rosy days for his workplace and his family, the coming of an eternal spring where his job is assured, his pay cheque fatter, his family better off. After the election it’s another story. His workplace has no future, his pay cheque is gone forever (either he accepts to resign with what the Italians call una tantum or else he is sacked without any remuneration). Decisions are taken in the corridors of power. He is presented with a fait accompli, which in crude words reads, “Damn you if you do, damn you if you don’t”. When the gods of Castile have decided, who are we poor mortals to question them?

Our gods have decided now that the Yard has no future, that the workforce is too cumbersome, that any potential buyers would demand a clean slate devoid of workers, that

this is the only valid solution, that if they are thwarted in their plans it is almost high treason, because criticism of their actions is the work of lesser men who should know better and that every true Maltese is loyal to the nation if, and only if, he or she toes their line. Our gods, it is decreed, can make all the mistakes possible because in the end it is mere people who are obliged to foot the bill, those whom Coriolanus refers to as “fragments”.

It is not my habit to look back because those who look back court the fate of Lot’s wife. However, the Yard’s present crises, brought about by the present government’s inefficiency and lack of drive, obliges me to narrate the makings of the Yard’s disaster. In the 1960s, the Yard faced two crises that threatened to choke her in her infancy as a commercial undertaking. When Bailey took the Yard to the brink of total bankruptcy, the then Prime Minister took the only possible road open to save Malta’s oldest industry. He asked Swan Hunter to manage its running and operations. Never in its brief history had the Yard seen such success. Tankers used to anchor two by two in Grand Harbour waiting their turn to enter for repairs.

Then came the 1967 Seven Day War between Israel and the Arab States, and the closure of the Suez Canal. Leader of the Opposition Dom Mintoff and Attard Kingswell’s GWU co-operated fully to ride out the crisis and the Yard weathered the storm. However, when the 1971 General Election was on the horizon, the tripartite co-operation fizzled out, as the political stakes for the MLP were too high, in the sense that Mintoff could not lose a third election in succession, and the Yard was turned into a political weapon. The deadly poison of politics destroyed the healthy tissues of an industry that was struggling to get on its feet. The sad story of political meddling and crude government inefficiency has been the sad story of the Yard ever since.

Now, after pumping millions and millions of liri and euros, the Prime Minister, forgetting his pre-electoral promises, has decided that the only way out is to cut his losses and make our tax burdened people fork out more in order to privatise the Yard. He insists that privatisation is the wave of the future and we must all pay homage to God the Market. And here, I must stand up and tell Lawrence Gonzi, “No sir, privatisation is not the cure for the ailing Yard. If the government has no ulterior motives and wants to get rid of the Yard at all costs; or if worse still, it does not give a damn if after a few years the buyers will do away with the industry and use the real estate for development, then the government should take a leaf out of a great Prime Minister’s book and turn the Yard over to a competent company with the necessary managerial skills. Borg Olivier found his Swan Hunter, maybe you will find yours, if you try hard.”

It is not only I who has doubts on privatisation at all costs, come what may. On Sunday 24 August, RAI3 reported live the annual Summer Festival organized by Veltroni’s PD. During the debate on Fiscal Federalism, Finance Minister Tremonti of Berlusconi’s PDL, condemned the present tendency to treat privatisation as a panacea for all Italy’s ills and was widely applauded by a leftist audience when he declared that il dio mercato non ha tutte le soluzioni (God the Market does not have all the answers). Then Tremonti went on to emphasise that in certain strategic cases, the State must intervene and intervene decisively. Opposition Leader Dr Joseph Muscat should, I say must, tread the same path and opt for a solution not based on paying homage to a god who does not answer our prayers. We must all find enough courage to explain to our people that, where and when the need arises, the State should not shy away from finding solutions that do not please the god Market.

The following is an extract from the front page of The Times of Thursday, 7 August in which correspondent Claudia Calleja headlines “Yards schemes may cost e49 million”. Calleja goes on to explain the entire cost to the nation. This is the folly of politics in our time. The gods make mistakes and their votaries pay. This is unacceptable and every Maltese should, and indeed must, stand up to oppose this folly. It is high time that we call a spade a spade and that he who commits mistakes suffers the consequences. I hope that we are still in time to prove to ourselves and to future generations that we have not accepted meekly to play the part of sheep that can only bleat but are otherwise powerless to resist the imposition of an unjust system; to say NO to the follies of a less than paternal government.

I am also presenting a copy of a letter that our Prime Minister sent to each and every Yard worker prior to the election. His words prove beyond any doubt that he promised heaven before securing his mandate and delivered hell when he was firmly in the saddle. He began by reminding the Yard worker that “the Yard’s future is of interest to yourself and your family”. Then he burst into a panegyric of praise, climaxing with the rhetoric that “he and the Nationalist Party strongly believe in the workingman’s capacities and those of his mates”. With tongue-in-cheek, the Prime Minister went on to emphasize that “our country’s Yard should have a future wherein it will prove to be an important contributor to the Maltese economy”. He never blushed when he promised his reader that “I” am “going to work” so “that together we’ll reach the goal where the Yard becomes a going concern and progresses on its own steam. In this way you, your work mates and your families will go on prospering by working more, earning more money and paying fewer taxes.”

How do you like that? Is there a cynical pattern here? Of promise now and forget about it later? He promised more work and now he devises plans to send the workers home jobless, sweetening the bitter pill with swathes of people’s money! Woe to us if we try to remind him of his promises; if we try to tell him he is wrong; that the Yard cannot be murdered and then buried with impunity.

I believe that we are still in time to save the nation’s ship.

In the 1970s and 1980s, we saved it during a hazardous voyage in stormy and inclement waters. I know because I was there. I played my part to the full and beyond what was expected of me. Now the challenge is more difficult as our ship is navigating not in stormy waters but in a calm, lifeless and enervating sea, like that which sent a shiver down the spine of the Ancient Mariner. May we find the courage to steer the ship of state from the seas where Life-in-Death reigns so that in the future we will not be forced to exclaim:

“The many men, so beautiful!

“And they all dead did lie:

“And a thousand, thousand slimy things

“Lived on; and so did I”

In all my life I have never accepted to play the abject role of a slimy thing. I was always a man whose basic belief was and is that “Life is Action.” Like the Ancient Mariner I dropped the albatross from around my neck and like him I believe that we must steer the ship of State towards a land where all members of the community feel that they are part “of” society and not just “in” society.” Even at this late hour, all is not lost. While there is life, there is hope. All we have to do is to find the courage to say NO to a future that is bad news for the Yard, its workers, and all of us.