That once lost they are virtually impossible to stitch together again. This could be easily detected from the whimper with which the Budget 2011 ended or rather to be more precise, petered out.

Almost as an afterthought the PM told us or hinted that after all:

• This week the House will be finally appointing the Black Dust Commission;

• That the Dwejra environmental saga is being probed by the MEPA auditor with a little help from MEPA itself;

• That ARMS Ltd will be finally trying to get their act together;

• That Jesmond Mugliett, who hours earlier accused government of gross incompetence, will be chairing the Environment and Planning Parliamentary Committee

• That government was determined to strengthen further (sic) the Auditor General’s role and office.

All this adds up to nothing but a futile exercise in patchwork.

Usually most newspaper editorials are poles apart from one another in terms of political direction as well as in the summary conclusions they reach.

Last week was an exception to the rule. They all seemed to have the same common strand.

The Times argued that since the government side is in the majority in the Public Accounts Committee, with four members to three from the Opposition, the Speaker’s recent ruling could well spell the end of the Opposition’s efforts in the committee to bring the BWSC issue subject to greater scrutiny.

In the same breadth, The Malta Business Weekly spoke of the mismanagement that characterized ARMS LTD that was set up by the Enemalta and WSC to handle billing and customer care, in a manner that exceeded the tolerance limit which the country is usually prepared to accept from a government entity.

To add insult to injury, the admittance that the four managers responsible for setting up the company, and implementing the system, were paid a performance bonus last year was considered by the editorialist to be very hard to accept.

It defies logic to digest and even harder to accept, that we should be ‘thankful’ that government is investing some E65M in a system that is not working properly after more than nine months of usage.

Although the investigation by the Auditor General will spell the truth on what went wrong in terms of utility billing this year, as claimed ‘what will remain doubtful, however, is the investment made in the software system and the company to manage it.’

Meanwhile the PL can hardly be blamed for arguing that it was incongruous that the government had decided to allow an investigation by the AG on ARMS LTD but not on the smart meters contract.

After all as claimed the contract which was a major one, was closely linked to ARMS LTD.

The fact that the Finance Minister had declared that the Auditor General’s report on ARMS LTD would eventually be discussed by the Public Accounts Committee, where the management could be questioned, contrasted sharply with the same government’s objection to the questioning of present and former Enemalta personnel by the PAC in connection with the BWSC contract.

It is pointless for Nationalist ministers to claim that the PL is in self denial whenever it decides to rubbish government’s inefficiencies.

Last week we had at least two sterling opportunities where eminent Nationalist MPs did not mince words when it came to nailing their own government on its ineptitude and incompetence as well as lack of social justice.

Jesmond Mugliett, the former PN Cabinet Minister lashed out at the total government failure and incompetence on ARMS LTD stressing that the blunders committed carried a heavy price for the consumers to shoulder.

He criticized the methodology employed in the software changeover while concluding that we are paying a high price for a service that is not being delivered.

Even more worrying was his assertion that nobody seems to accept responsibility for this sort of thing anymore – a point often made by the PL itself and a number of independent observers and analysts of the local scene.

On his part, although he was told that he should have known better by a patronizing minister, Nationalist MP Jean Pierre Farrugia criticized government over supplementary allowances claiming that the increases in the Budget were so low that it would have been better had they not been given at all.

He also argued that unless the government started to help the ‘low cost’ private homes for the elderly, the demand for housing in government homes would rise steeply, at a greater cost to the government.

Recently I wrote an article called Black Dust and Air Malta in Maltese.

It was triggered by the fact that although government never has any qualms about trying to demolish and run roughshod over the Opposition, the moment they find themselves back against the wall, unable to grapple with a problem without a quick fix solution in sight they try to turn to the PL for help. As in the case of the black dust saga and the financial dire straits AIR MALTA has ended up in.

This brings me to another pivotal issue - as to whether we may be sitting or not on a time bomb in connection with the Marsa Power Station. I recently asked how many of the 20,000 operational hours were left, before this old and heavily polluting plant found itself in breach of the large combustion plant directive.

The reply I obtained formally was that while all chimneys had a 20,000 hr limit each the resultant balance showed that in less than three years, Marsa had consumed some 63,638 hours out of a collective total of 80,000 hours (20K X 4) thus implying that we only have some 16,362 hours left before we find ourselves subjected to heavy penalties from the EU’s side.

Meanwhile bear in mind the following:

a) Without an inter connector we will be unable to substitute Marsa since the Delimara extension – regardless of whether it will be operating on heavy fuel oil or not – will not have enough capacity to substitute fully the Marsa PS

b) According to a Ministerial reply recently given the contract regarding the interconnector has not been signed yet although government intends to see the project up and running by January – in less than two months time!

c) According to the same Minister – Minister T Fenech – the full implementation of the interconnector might take around three more years. This means that a new administration will almost certainly find a time bomb ticking badly as of day one. Further proof that by the forthcoming elections it is most likely that the interconnector will not even be in place. If all these pointers do not suggest gross incompetence and ineptitude the mind boggles as to what could alarm us even more or keep us further on tenter hooks.

With all this in mind, one will surely agree that no matter how much Dr Gonzi might have tried to tidy up the mess that his own administration has created, he is intelligent enough to realise that like a former (political) virgin he can hardly put his (political) virginity back in place, the same way that it is well nigh impossible to restore his and his jaded government’s almost permanently tarnished credibility.

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www.leobrincat.com

Leo Brincat is the Shadow Minister for the Environment, Sustainable Development & Climate Change