I’m tired of asking. When is the Labour Party going to give us even an inkling of what it plans to do, starting in 18 months’ time?
The situation is now ridiculous. If this were an old-style Hollywood film, the screen would be full of pages from a calendar, torn off and blowing away as days flash past in a metaphorical countdown.
The single idea that party leader Muscat had, of moving for divorce – and it wasn’t even going to be party policy but a private member’s bill – has been overcome by events. And still, nothing.
With increasing frequency, because he is now closer to his life’s ambition, Muscat chastises the government and the man he calls ‘Lawrence’ for doing things badly. But he leaves out the crucial element of what should be the Opposition’s proper criticism: how it would do things better, how it plans to do things well.
Without that information, the Opposition leader’s words sound like bar-room barracking, to which the only possible response is, “All right, sir. You’ve told us what is wrong. Now please tell us how you plan to put it right.”
Too much is being assumed here. The Labour Party assumes that we will take it on trust – a calculated risk based on the fact that around 47% of the electorate will vote for it however awful it is, while various factors to do mainly with boredom and the need to create excitement will bring in the rest of the votes.
Meanwhile, those who have determined to vote Labour assume that the party has some kind of secret plan or even that no plan is necessary because when it comes to governing, you can wing it. The engine is running, you just get behind the wheel and drive.
Long months ago, Muscat announced that his party’s electoral manifesto for 2013 would be written by Karmenu Vella, the architect known by his village nickname Il-Guy. Yet we have heard nothing since and no reporter appears to have found it necessary to hold both Vella and his boss Muscat to account on progress.
The choice of chief policy writer in itself fails to inspire confidence. Vella is a veteran of Old Labour, distinguished by little more than his ability to survive nuclear fall-out. He was a minister in the cabinets of all three Labour prime ministers since the 1970s: Dom Mintoff, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici and Alfred Sant. His self-presentation and chameleon-like ability to put on a show of affability and reasonableness, when in the company of business operators and the cocktail party crowd, is in stark contrast to the true self which emerges on Facebook (yes, he’s a Facebook man) as a champion of Dom Mintoff, his methods and his rule. It was Karmenu Vella who coined the description ‘the Golden Years’ to describe the Mintoffian period.
Moody’s downgrading of Malta’s foreign-currency and national currency government bond ratings to A2 from A1, with a revision of the outlook to negative, has prompted another barrage of barracking from Muscat, who said that our only option now is to choose a change of government. But he did not say why we should choose him as the new prime minister or explain what he would do differently.
Instead, he left us with the words “Labour reiterates its conviction that with competent leadership and a plan for economic growth, our country can get through this difficult period.” Those words, coming as they do from somebody who fought against EU membership and, more recently, joining the Eurozone, fail to inspire the required degree of confidence.
Even less inspiring are the messages put across by the Labour Party’s website, Maltastar, which editorialised yesterday:
“Then predictably and very cynically the PN want to hear the PL’s policies, knowing that via spending money we don’t have they can promise the world to the Tonio’s, the Austins, the Georges and their sons and grandsons who make up the PN voting machine.”
I’m not quite certain what that means, but I do know this: it is not ‘the PN’ that wishes to have information on what Karmenu Vella is lining up for the country, but the electorate. People who habitually vote Labour come hell or high water might not care, but the rest of us do – yes, even those of us who have no intention of voting Labour should be accorded the courtesy of being told what plans there are, lest we suspect there are none at all.
Maltastar’s editorialising continued:
“Joseph Muscat knows, as all people of goodwill know, that if we manage our affairs with prudence and foresight this negative trend in our economy can be reversed. It is imperative though that government comes clean on what our financial situation really is. It is also time for the Finance Minister and the Prime Minister to acknowledge that their eyes have been off the ball for quite a while.”
Unfortunately for the Labour Party, ‘Joseph Muscat’s foresight’ is an oxymoron. He has demonstrated that he has difficulty seeing things clearly even with the benefit of hindsight.
As for the government coming clean “on what our financial situation really is”, the Leader of the Opposition, of all people, should know that little about the finances of an EU member state can be kept hidden, let alone from the government-in-waiting. If Muscat has nobody competent enough to assess the available figures and to sniff the rest out, then he’s got nobody competent enough to be finance minister. When carping about Tonio Fenech, he hasn’t even bothered to let us know who the alternative is.