Ignore discontent at your own peril

Whatever the merits of Friday’s mass protest, be they out of genuine concern for the population’s standard of living or a very convenient vehicle for political mileage that practically landed in the opposition’s lap, the voices of discontent will be ignored at the government’s own peril.

The government is certainly listening but it does not appear to be heeding the calls. Yes, the government has promised to entertain requests for compensation for the hikes in fuel and gas prices come March once its report on inflation is concluded, although it has added the caveat that an acceptance of the request is not necessarily a given.

Whether they are merited or granted will remain to be seen.

City Gate and the projects being planned in the lead up to the quickly approaching general election will not be enough if people feel they are being given a raw deal. Expenditures, EU-funded or not, will be used as opposition ammunition.

And, we are sorry to say, the most impressive artillery in the opposition’s war chest, if an electoral campaign were to be held tomorrow - if it did not in fact kick off on Friday evening - is the untimely raise in the Cabinet members’ wages. That grates on the collective conscience and it could very well lose the government the next election if that artillery is aimed well, although it is a pretty much something of a self-guided missile.

It will stand to be seen what sweeteners the government will be able to proffer come election time and, whether one agrees that Cabinet members are worth an extra €600 a week or not, it will take something very, very sweet to rid the average citizen of the bad taste in the mouth the increments have left.

The bottom line, as we have seen over recent weeks the Tunisian regime ignored the problems plaguing the country for far too long and the autocracy there became simply no longer supportable.

Of course there is no real comparison between the two situations, although only some 400 kilometres apart. There will be no street-led usurping of power at Castille as we have seen in Tunis, and the present administration is far from the autocracy that the Tunisian regime was, or possibly still is although clad in new garb.

But the underlying principles are the same. If a government fails to explain itself in easily digestible terms and properly address its citizen’s legitimate concerns, well founded or not, for their families’ standard of living or if it continues to stubbornly insist on staying the course of its decisions irrespective of the outcries such as in the case of the new Delimara power station extension or its ill-advised salary increments – the people will rebel.

Here the government has found itself between a rock and a very hard place. If it relents and accedes to such requests, it will be seen as weak and lose face. If it doesn’t, it will face a very hard uphill struggle come election time since, in Malta’s case, that rebellion could very well take place at the polling booths.

Emergency and labour pains

This editorialist had the unfortunate experience of having to visit Mater Dei’s Accident and Emergency on Friday - in this particular case not once but twice.

On both occasions there were no queues, no patients stranded upon stretchers in the corridors and no chaos – everything was just as should be – a smooth running of the country’s main hospital.

Perhaps it was a slow day at the A&E, perhaps it was just blind luck, perhaps the flu outbreak is dwindling or perhaps the problems we and practically every other newspaper in the country have been highlighting have addressed.

We sincerely hope that the latter case is the case here. The Emergency Nurses Union, however, earlier in the week called off its threatened industrial action in the interest of patients since the emergency ward was still severely overcrowded.

In the meantime, alternative sites for patients waiting for beds at Mater Dei are being sought. 50 have been promised by February and another 100 by the end of the year. Whether this is enough to solve the problem of sudden influxes such as those recently, in which some 300 patients were filing into the ward every day for flu symptoms, will remain to be seen.

Separately, other problems with induced labour at the maternity ward are also being tackled now, the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses – the union leading calls for a revision of practices – has said this week through collaboration with the health department.

Both pieces of news are warmly welcomed. Health and the people’s confidence in the health care sector are not things to be trifled with or politicised. We stand foursquare behind anyone – union, government or any other party – working toward the betterment of both.