I have always failed to understand why some people, companies or organisations always seem to make mountains out of molehills from seemingly minor, elementary or basic issues. Let’s take the political parties as examples and, without going into their specific statutes, give our view from the outside in. That is, the way that a non-political, common citizen might see things.
The MLP has, since March of this year, gone through a very difficult period after losing an election for the third consecutive time and had to select and elect its leaders and administrative officers.
Dr Joseph Muscat was elected as party leader, with Drs Angelo Farrugia and Toni Abela as Deputy Leaders for Parliamentary Affairs and Party Affairs respectively. All three of them are new to their roles and their first priority is to polish their political image and work intelligently towards being accepted by the floating voter. Eventually, they might make a success of their mission in life, that is, to see their party winning an election in due course. But this requires hard work, image and intelligent rationale to solve national issues and problems, and to refrain from taking the historic negative attitude as the party in Opposition, which has been the case for the last 10 years. The Opposition’s function in a democratic parliament is not to oppose the party in government on each and every issue but to suggest and discuss amendments to laws or issues brought forward by the various ministers so that any final new legislation would be of benefit to, and agreed to, by all concerned.
Dr Muscat was then faced with the election of administrative officers, in which delegates once again elected people who were associated with the loss of the previous three elections. The culture of resignation is not embedded in our system and pride and loss of face do not really come into the equation. So it does seem that Dr Muscat has been lumbered with an administration team he did not really wish to have. Hence, the creation of a new executive position within the party of a CEO, which might in itself create a power struggle between the general secretary, the Deputy Leader for Party Affairs and the new appointee.
In this matter, the MLP has really washed its dirty linen in public when Dr Muscat could have solved this matter quietly and internally. He should be thankful for the fact that he’s got two Deputy Leaders one of whom is not an elected MP and is responsible for party affairs. Rather than creating another controversial position and therefore creating more problems for himself, the role of Deputy Leader for Party Affairs should have been revised in such a way to make him the CEO of the party (after all he was elected by the delegates) with full executive responsibility for party matters and directly responsible to the leader who sets out strategy and policy. The general secretary’s role should also have been revised and established solely as a day to day administrative role as dictated by the Deputy Leader for Party Affairs for specific administrative work only. This is definitely an example of a molehill made into a mountain. Some lateral thinking is really required inside the MLP, but then again I am only looking in from outside. A good management team is one that is streamlined and composed of competent and qualified people with defined roles and clear job responsibilities. The bigger a management team is, especially if overlap of responsibilities and functions are known to exist between its members, the more inefficient it becomes and is the right formulae for the creation of cliques and piques.
The seven deadly sins of management can be listed as: arrogance, indecisiveness, disorganisation, stubbornness, negativism, cowardice and distrust. The MLP has had its full share of these sins over time, and it is about time it starts working seriously to reinvent itself.
These internal problems as well as his current role as an MEP are precluding Dr Muscat from looking more closely at the national issues currently engulfing this small nation. The announcement that he will be appointed Leader of the Opposition as from 1 October, after the proposed resignation of Joseph Cuschieri, is welcome for one reason only and that is the proper function of the House of Representatives. Tangible results and performance shall be awaited with bated breath, and his first real test shall be the forthcoming budget debates.
When Dr Gonzi took over from Dr Fenech Adami as Prime Minister, he inherited a team of ministers and a number of parliamentary secretaries, some of whom were running ministries that were not really functioning as they should have been. As examples, we had the road projects, most of which had cost overruns running into millions and whose completion dates were never met. We also had another ministry promising a White Paper on rent reform for all of five years, which was never presented during the last legislature. Mepa was the paragon of inconsistency and the environment was in a mess. I could go on like this ad infinitum but let’s come to the present.
In March, Dr Gonzi was elected Prime Minister in his own right and has appointed a streamlined Cabinet of just eight ministers and a number of parliamentary secretaries. Some of the new ministers have shown that they are able to tackle controversial issues and drawn up strategies to solve problems immediately, others just dilly dally as they have always done, while there are those who are simply lost in their role.
Thus, among others, we are faced with three issues all of which fall under EU rules and legislation. One issue, which is a minor matter to solve, is the Departure Tax. The government has already been rapped several times by Brussels about this, but it was stated that the tax would eventually be removed sometime in November. By that time the holiday season will be over and the government would have garnered millions of euros from the public while persisting in breaking EU rules. Well done.
If this tax is wrong, remove it. There is absolutely nothing to think about. We are breaking EU law, so why risk making a mountain out of this minor molehill and risk being fined and getting a bad reputation in the process?
Secondly, there is the VAT being charged on the Registration Tax on imported new and second-hand vehicles. The VAT charge on the registration tax is in clear breach of EU rules. The European Court of Justice has already decided a case on the same subject – “De Danske Billimportorer – case C-98/05”.
The Ministry of Finance is still studying ways and means on how to replace the shortfall in revenue, once these taxes are removed, with the introduction of an Emissions Contribution system, and, as stated, additional charges for length of vehicles, size of engines and so on.
First and foremost, it is logically clear for anyone to see that adding VAT to the registration tax is a scam created to collect extra money by imposing an illegal charge on top of another tax. This charge is illegal, goes against EU requirements and a court judgment on a similar case already exists in the EU. So why persist in this illegality? VAT charges on the registration tax should have been removed as soon as the government received the first letter on this subject from the EU. Conformity with the law applies to both the citizen as well as to the government; besides which, the government should lead by example.
This conundrum arose when the Minister was thinking about ways and means of raising the lost revenue from other sources. Firstly, this is not lost revenue. It is daylight robbery of the citizen in the same way as the tax on credit cards, which was introduced by a Labour government between 1996/98, is. These are charges that should have never been introduced as they infringe illegally on every citizen’s basic right to a modern lifestyle and existence. Why create a mountain out of a molehill when the party in government could have gained political points by revising these anomalies immediately. Anything that is being introduced in lieu will now be interpreted as another government induced cost and another tax, and an additional burden on the citizen.
With the Polluter Pays system, also known as the Emissions Control System, it is useless to try and introduce complicated systems of licensing charges on size of vehicle or size of engine cubic capacity. Every vehicle using fossil fuels (diesel or petrol) pollutes. Every engine emits exhaust no matter its size, but the amount of pollution that finds itself in the atmosphere is proportional to the use of that particular vehicle. You can have a new vehicle with a large engine that conforms to the latest EU emissions regulations, which pollutes very little in comparison to its size, but then again you can have an older vehicle with a smaller, obsolete engine that pollutes the atmosphere many times over. Have you ever driven behind a bus, a truck, a van, a crane and even older cars, which emit black (fuel) exhaust or thick white (oil) exhaust from exhaust pipe that makes you report it to the ADT Vehicle Exhaust department? Then you know what I am talking about.
To control pollution through exhaust emissions from road vehicles of any category and age, as well as from exhaust fumes emanating from industrial engines and boilers, (because it is not only vehicles that pollute the atmosphere), two things have to be introduced and these have nothing to do with complicated systems of licensing, length of vehicles or engine cubic capacities.
If one pollutes he pays. To pollute one must burn fuel. The more an engine is used the more fuel is burnt and the more pollution occurs. Therefore taking into consideration current fuel costs, an additional tax on fuel could be introduced that has to be paid by everyone who purchases fuel. The polluter pays system can only work in this way; the more you burn the more you pay. The bigger the engine, the older less efficient and badly maintained engines are, the more they consume and pollute, therefore anyone running these engines has to pay.
If we are so concerned about pollution from vehicles, then the current VRT testing system, which is useless in any case, (the number of substandard and heavy exhaust emitted by vehicles on our roads can attest to this fact), must be drastically revised and a number of competent persons appointed to report such vehicles as seen on the roads. Action and withdrawal of the road licence of the vehicle as well as that of the last VRT tester to be effected. Out of the 292,000 vehicles on the roads of Malta, there are thousands of vehicles that are not road worthy due to their exhaust emissions. The warden system is also a failure in this respect.
So once again, why does the government have to make mountains out of molehills in sorting out this issue by trying to hide behind every unjustifiable technical excuse to enrich government coffers with our hard-earned money, when the government itself is so flagrantly breaking EU laws?
The third basic, immediate issue is the privatisation of Malta Shipyards, which I have covered in various separate features in The Malta Independent in the last weeks. Being penny-wise and pound-foolish seems to be the national pastime of this small nation. Paying out €58 million in redundancy schemes and writing off €100 million in accrued debt on top of the millions that have been written off in the past to sustain and bail out a loss-making entity, due to gross mismanagement, due to proven and known commercial failures like the Fairmount project, and lack of productivity, do not seem to mean anything as long as the government can milk more and more from our diminishing salaries in taxes, causing more deteriorating lifestyles.
Apart from the above matters, there are other urgent issues the government has to sort out and deal with in the next four-and-a-half years of this legislature. The public transport reform, the pre-1995 rent reform, the long-awaited Mepa reform, sustainable development, the environment, controversial issues such as the divorce debate and the preparation of effective project plans and the training of people for the SmartCity project once it is completed; these are all make or break situations where the government is concerned. Having the right people in the respective ministries to cope with all these national issues is the question.
These matters require more technical and managerial acumen from our political parties; the best brains of both major parties should be utilised to the full, irrespective of political obligations. The citizen is already very hard pressed to make ends meet in most cases, and when common sense is seen to be so missing from our leaders we can only sigh and bear it. We have no other choice, as we can only comment and state our view from the outside in.
Mr Spiteri is a marine and industrial consultant.