Last week I was invited to two events organised by the Nationalist Party. The theme of both events was solidarity through job creation. The main speaker was the Prime Minister and leader of the Nationalist Party.

It is always heartening to listen to the Prime Minister being upbeat and confident about Malta’s success in facing up to the global financial situation despite piling up debts to build a new parliament, build an extension to the power station, propose another incinerator at Delimara, build a Malta-Sicily power cable, while giving dockyard workers and transport owners millions of euros in compensation. The aquifer is being rapidly depleted due to years of inaction over illegal boreholes and we are forced to lend money to Greece and many millions of euros to the EU stability fund.

Cracks and contradictions

That the Prime Minister can speak with confidence and convincingly is undisputed. I just wonder if his seeming confidence is a solution to national problems. I also wondered if what he said at the conference reflected what people out in the streets are feeling and experiencing. Our Prime Minister, by common consent, is not one known to shut himself in his office and not meet people! Is it that our Prime Minister is fed what he enjoys eating while what is indigestible to him is kept away? Or is it in his character to treat arguments he disagrees with as something of little value?

That this administration has done good things goes without saying, but at times it seems that it tends to slip up by projecting itself as insensitive and arrogant. While the financial/economic crisis engulfs practically the whole of Europe, we boast that the economic crisis has not affected us because our economy is built on strong foundations.

Yet the government was forced to dig deep into the nation’s piggy bank to save as many jobs as possible by helping companies and giving concessions to those who could not meet their financial obligations especially in the tourism sector. Out in the streets, traders speak of empty consumer pockets that have compromised sales. And there seems to be no respite from unemployment queues, while more and more people, especially pensioners, are falling below the poverty line.

The politics of responsibility

In the light of all these apparent contradictions, one is justified in indulging in some scepticism. For a start, have we really been given all the information, and the correct information at that? In his contribution in another section of the press this week, Simon Busuttil seemed to imply the presence of deep problems. He talked about the need to have political leaders with the guts to take the necessary reforms. He talked about the politics of responsibility that do not shy away from what is hard and unpopular. He actually said that if we want to avoid the Greek fix, we must take the difficult decisions now. All this points to only one thing: that the upbeat approach to the faithful at the party conference is really masking something very serious.

I ask because people today don’t just demand to be fully informed but they also demand to participate in the decisions that affect their daily lives. A Labour spokesman on a television programme rightly said that while many might ignore the various accusations bandied about by both main parties outside election campaigns, they tend to be highly interested when their own well-being is at stake.

The seeds of our problems

It is therefore important for government to heed public opinion and to come clean if there is a problem. If we have a crisis this isn’t going to fix itself. That is exactly what happened in Greece. The previous government cooked the books not to lose power. Now the whole country is paying. Tragically, lessons do not seem to have been learnt either. To see the opposition in Greece, the same party that created the crisis, voting against the measures imposed on the country instead of closing ranks at such a critical time for the well-being of the nation, is not only unbelievable but also downright criminal.

The current financial global crisis did not come about with the fall of a bank or two. As Xerox CEO Ann Mulchy said, many crises seem to happen overnight, but they have really deep roots, like 10 to 15 years in terms of the source of the real problem. And this holds true both for global and local problems.

In the light of this, I think it is fair to ask of both parties in Parliament, when were the real seeds of the present problems sown? The worse thing they could possibly do is to blame each other while Rome burns and us with it. The noblest thing they could do at such a time is to try and work together by putting the good of the country ahead of party political advantages. Do we have statesmen made of such stuff?

Statesmen put the nation first

Our Prime Minister would therefore be well advised to use his powers of communication to bring people together to confront their worst fears and address the risks. Drawing red battle lines from which to fire on each other is of little point. The international situation, especially the European one, is not at all steady, convincing or reassuring. Our leaders and their respective administrations must be willing to accept responsibility for the mess they helped create, and to acknowledge their own role in the crisis.

Like tumours growing inside the body, problems left unaddressed get worse. But we must face problems together, without exception. After all, we have all contributed in some way or other to the present crisis and difficulties because it is us who elect and re-elect the governments that administer the nation in our name. If we did that without studying what the two parties were promising, if we did it out of tribal loyalty, then some of us at least, can hardly complain.

Is it ‘Mission Accomplished?’

Simon Busuttil, quite rightly, wrote that Malta needs to bring about the right economic conditions that can enable the generation of wealth. Of course there are ways and means of generating wealth, not all of which are acceptable or equitable.

George Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” sign displayed on board the aircraft carrier Lincoln, prematurely declaring the Iraq War over, is a lesson demanding to be learnt.