A quick look at the Nationalist media during the past few days says it all. Only last Thursday they gave far more front page prominence to the stiff austerity measures introduced in the UK by the Tory-Lib coalition rather than focusing, as they customarily do, on a welcome new local investment in the pharma industry.
This was the same approach that Lawrence Gonzi adopted during his recent Bondi+ interview, by focusing on the hard times that the Greeks, the Spanish, the Portuguese and the Irish are going through.
Before we used to be told that we never had it so good under a Nationalist administration.
Now they have changed tack.
The new spin is that although our economy and finances might continue to under perform, we are not experiencing the same jolts and shocks that some of our Mediterranean colleagues are going through in the EU.
I have no doubt that the budget itself will have various references to the word prudence to camouflage the blandness of it all.
But then this guessing game could in the final analysis prove to be as trite and predictable as the plot of that hoary old David Niven movie Prudence and The Pill where after finding out that Prudence was on the pill, we suddenly discovered that so was her sister-in-law, while someone has been busy swapping aspirins for their pills.
After having seen government accused by various editorialists late last week of having lost the plot over the BWSC tender, and been reminded in Parliament by many – yours truly included – that in spite of the lip service paid to the Ombudsman, both Fenech Adami and Lawrence Gonzi had never thought twice about rubbishing those holding this prestigious office publicly on more than one occasion, it was interesting to track the lead into yesterday’s budget.
But then this was also a week of contradictions with Mario de Marco telling a Gozitan seminar that not only do we hope to surpass EU minimum standards on the environment but also on sustainable development. The problem is that we remain laggards on both counts.
All this in the same week when both he and the PM shocked everyone by ducking in the House a barrage of supplementary questions on a ticklish subject – hazardous waste – after having kept us waiting for 20 whole months to reply to a straight forward question of mine on the same subject.
As for the budget it is useless of the PN to claim that the PL tried to give the impression that Malta was immune from the international economic storm.
If anything it was the PN administration itself that stubbornly refused to admit that we ever experienced a recession. Actually those who used to mention the word recession were instantly rubbished as harbingers of doom as if they were uttering a four-letter word during a church sermon!
From what I can tell the biggest flaw of this budget is bound to be that it will merely roll over and present as new a number of measures that were meant to have been introduced during the Budget 2010 now nearing the end of its financial year.
In the lead in to the budget we were told far more what NOT to expect rather than what to expect.
While government did not rule out tax cuts in this legislature – I bet it will happen in the last pre-electoral Budget for obvious reasons – the minister told an interviewer that there would be no such cuts in Monday’s budget. Quite a predictable stand too.
In spite of the reassurance that unless the deficit would be reduced to below the 3% threshold, the government would never have the flexibility to introduce tax cuts I am sure that EU pressures notwithstanding government will try and come up with such a sweetener close to the elections under one guise or another.
We have had many previous budgets that equally tried to balance the promotion of economic growth and an attempt to cut down on the fiscal deficit. The real litmus test will be whether government will manage to do so not in the Budget itself – that is the easiest part – but when implementing the Budget throughout 2011.
That government will focus on cost reduction is not a bad idea at all. Let us hope that not only ministries but even those states within states – the government agencies and quangos will actually lead by example.
Another non budget issue according to the Minister is that there will be no major pension reform initiative announced. From what I can tell the process is being deliberately delayed in anticipation of some form of economic recovery even though from what I have been told plans have already been watered down somewhat.
Understandably the employers called for a budget aimed at stimulating growth. I personally think that this is most urgently needed even more so in those sectors which are still struggling to achieve pre-recession levels. Merely improving marginally on recession figures is of little consolation.
While one welcomes any attempt to curb the deficit, I think government must take heed of Lino Spiteri’s wise words of advice that the planned reduction in the statutory deficit will not act as a brake on economic growth.
Having followed the Nationalist media run up to the budget, I am almost sure that either in yesterday’s speech or else in Lawrence Gonzi’s initial reactions to the budget – if not also in his parliamentary reply – we will end up with the mantra that while others are up in arms protesting and facing unemployment we have been achieving positive results.
The mood of the people that I have been meeting, regardless of their political views seems to indicate otherwise.
Since while most of the problems elsewhere are attributable to the international recession, in Malta most of them are government induced.
Let us hope for better days when initiative, entrepreneurship and aspirations can be really addressed and motivated.
The PL will obviously not prove to be a perfect administration but it will definitely be more real, less dependent on hype and far, far more result oriented and serious in the conduct of its own business.
That much I am sincerely convinced of.
That is – if the electorate chose to reverse the very marginal gap between the two parties registered in 2008.
Meanwhile judging by Gonzi’s hysterical outburst on the new PL logo last Sunday it seems that the man is badly trying – and failing – to clutch at straws when even many editorialists in PN media friendly newspapers are publicly declaring that his government has long lost the plot.
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Leo Brincat is the Shadow Minister for the Environment, Sustainable Development & Climate Change