From the way the Prime Minister has been conducting his haphazardly organised fire-fighting parliamentary group meetings one can easily detect that rather than engaging on a charm offensive, he is trying to set out terms of endearment with his own restive and restless parliamentary group to try and pacify them and make sure that they will not make life more difficult for him than it has been so far.
I have coined the ‘terms of endearment’ tag because in spite of the niceties such terms often do not reveal much or anything about the true quality of the relationships in question.
And this seems to apply very much to the PM’s relationship with his own parliamentary group.
The most telling aspect of the recent meetings is that whilst the PL regularly convenes parliamentary group meetings every Monday, with added meetings on specific issues – on a case by case basis, the fact that the PN parliamentary group has not met for the last two months shows that in spite of arguably meeting more often than it might have done under EFA’s leadership, it is still a long way from the democratic, consistent and regular manner in which the PL group operates.
As I argued earlier on, Gonzi is not truly committed to team work but solely to his own political survival.
All the issues being brought up about the economy have a two pronged objective.
To ideally try and talk the economy up and secondly to give the impression that any street protests or resistance to the draconian utility rates risk jeopardising our economic situation while relegating us to almost junk status as in the case of the Greek economy.
But even here one can detect a strong whiff of opportunism, political expediency and sheer media management.
While Minister Tonio Fenech has been taking an active part to line up a series of meetings to industrial firms on the island to show that we are moving ahead while others are floundering, others are quick to point out that we are doing far better than Greece or Spain. The point is also being made that it is still too early to predict economic recovery and that although the effects of the economic recession in Malta have been relatively mild compared to those of other EU countries, it might on the other hand, take longer for the country to have a more rapid and stronger recovery to its economy than other EU countries.
One particular economist even hinted that an investment decline could be possible while government has been busy convincing us that investment flows continue to prevail contrary to trends elsewhere.
That Malta fared better than other countries in relative terms is definitely not thanks to government. We owe it single-handedly to our commercial banks which simply did not go under as they might have done elsewhere as a result of the credit crunch.
As a leading economist rightly pointed out last week, when financial stability returns in other countries, this factor will no longer serve Malta strongly as a source of competitive advantage.
What is sure is that those members of the business community that I met recently – and I am for a moment excluding the small and medium sized operators – tend to agree that although everyone is quick to dismiss 2009 as the annus horribilis, they contend that 2010 so far has started off far worse than the previous year did and developed.
I recently had occasion to talk to industrialists operating in Malta in multinational companies as well as to companies in the energy efficiency business overseas.
They both reached one instant conclusion. That Malta arguably has amongst the highest utility rates in the entire EU.
Which begs the $64,000 question: Why?
Is it due to the price of oil? Trends show that this is not the case.
How much of it is attributable to Enemalta inefficiencies? This was never quantified. Which begs another question – have they finally appointed anyone as an internal auditor after having conveniently operated without one for a number of years for reasons best left unknown?
How much transparency is there in the oil procurement business and what best practices are being introduced in this delicate and sensitive area where one can easily get his fingers’ burnt at taxpayers’ expense?
Alas these are the issues that one expects Lawrence Gonzi to be addressing rather than trying to placate his back benchers through such terms of endearment like ‘rewarding’ David Agius, the PN whip by reportedly ‘inviting’ him to sit on the front bench instead of EU Commissioner John Dalli or else toying with the idea of engaging a number of back benchers in ministerial work and routines – obviously without any of them being given any specific portfolio. How things will work out in practice if such a suggestion is finally adopted still has to be seen. I would simply love to see Franco Debono working on the Heavy Fuel Oil driven extension of the power station and laying the ground for the introduction of an incinerator in his own constituency at Marsaxlokk!
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Leo Brincat is the Shadow Minister for the Environment, Sustainable Development & Climate Change.