We as a nation seem to be spending most of our time correcting the long-neglected mistakes in our national make-up.

Take Air Malta, for instance. Having heard and considered what the two sides are saying (because there are always two sides - in this case the unions and the government) I cannot really see how Tonio Fenech can manage to save the airline.

Last week, I reported on what the people at the airline’s grass roots level are saying. The ideology that comes through is the 1970s all over again: Malta l-ewwel u qabel kollox, we are better than the foreigners, the foreigners are out to screw us, we can do everything on our own and better than others could.

All these years, they keep telling us, the airline kept making profits, it never needed government handouts, it bought its own planes, and it built and sustained Malta’s tourism industry. They forget that the airline was born out of the wreckage of private ventures that were never allowed to take off, that it remained in a monopoly position for years and years, or that the tourism product that Malta offered and that Air Malta sustained - that is, the sun and sea tourism - is a dated product today.

As a result, look at the sorry state the airline is now in – huge losses, a workforce bloated beyond all reason, a management structure of many chiefs and few Injuns, an airline going nowhere. Until a few months ago its top structures fulminated against low-cost airlines, now the grass roots fulminate against MIA and incredibly, and impossibly, want to set up their own terminal a couple of hundred metres down the road.

Even in more ideal situations no employee anywhere in the world would to see their company downsized. But this is no ideal situation – the airline is in a state of collapse. The employees like to speak of the many routes they worked (again, they neglect to state how many of the new routes were opened to ward off challenges by far bigger low cost airlines) but they do not tell us how many times these flights came back with only a few seats filled.

Of course, it’s the government’s fault. For so many years both sides of the country’s political equation used the airline to employ party supporters, to carry sick people for free (a service the government should pay for) and to offer freebees all around. But far more seriously, the government that freed private enterprise let the airline continue to be run according to the outdated 1970s ideology without correcting it in any way.

If, and I repeat if, there is in any way forward, the airline must be run along purely commercial lines. It is already working at a disadvantage in that the Ryanairs and easyJets of this world can generate far better economies of scale, impossible in the case of Air Malta, let alone hope to survive with such a bloated payroll.

The government forking out millions in an early-retirement scheme and taking on workers who can no longer be kept on at the airline is wrong, but they are really a token of acknowledgement of such long-term neglect.

The present situation at Air Malta is its hour of destiny. On a different level, last Wednesday’s vote on the divorce referendum motion can be looked at as Malta’s hour of destiny, on the important matter of our families. Last Wednesday’s sorry show in the House, preceded by a sorry debate, preceded by confusion all around, showed quite graphically how we are failing our people in its hour of destiny.

Things should have been done very differently. No one emerged with honours in this debacle, not the government which kept changing its position by the hour, not the Opposition which is guilty of the same fault, not the proposer who jumped the gun instead of working within the party structures, nor the only one who joined him in his rebellion for his own personal reasons, which have nothing to do with the divorce issue, nor those in the Opposition ranks who did not get their vote in the House to reflect their personal beliefs, nor the anti-divorce speakers, many of whose arguments reflected either a patronising outlook or a fundamentalist belief that in no way represents that of their constituents.

As a result we have had and are having a shambles – no debate on the issue or rather a lot of hot air but no real, informed, discussion. Points were made during the parliamentary debate but many points were not countered, nor examined, so everyone was left to draw up their own assessments. Is the question that will be asked formulating a no-fault divorce, as the Prime Minister said, or do we already have a no-fault marriage annulment procedure? Or on the other hand, why should we have divorce for the rich but not for the poor? Then we had the rush to get to the referendum, when that should have come at the end not just of a real debate, but also at the end of a proper parliamentary debate on a real bill. Instead, we will be voting on an ambiguous formula which can go here and there and which can anyway be changed by a simple parliamentary majority.

And then, over the past hours, we are facing Malta’s hour of destiny with regards to what is going on in Libya. Here again, the mistakes of the past have caught up with us. Over the past days there were many who hankered to what for the past decades has been Malta’s very subservient position with regards to the Gaddafi regime. Such people discussed at length the extent of Maltese investments in Libya which are now in real danger. They put pressure on the government to tone down its defence of the human rights of the protesters on the streets of Libya, and the government to a certain extent complied, to the extent that serious damage has been done to Malta’s name on the world stage.

Over the past weeks, I have been saying how I get the creeps whenever the government and the Opposition sing from the same hymn sheet. It was all well and good as long as Malta played its role as nurse of the Mediterranean, but now that push has come to shove, the time has come to choose. Malta can never be a bridge between Europe and North Africa, something it has never been. It has no chance of undertaking any real mediation in the present situation. Certainly, in the way it is being perceived internationally, its real present risk is that of being seen as Gaddafi’s stooge.

This is not to say that Malta should have offered to be a base for the enforcement of the no-fly zone, although even here there is much that has been going on behind the scenes and Malta has rendered help in a silent way.

What has also happened unfortunately is some messing around by some within our professional category who, for their own personal and rather patent reasons, have time and time again inflamed the international thirst for news with snippets involving Malta which turned out to be completely false.

This may be, on many levels, our hour of destiny, but not many are rising to the occasion.

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