Recently I was watching a DVD with my colleagues at work on how employees can work better together and how different sections can do their utmost to give the best support to each other. Basically, everyone had to give their best and consider other sections as their customers and as such give the best possible service

However at the beginning of this DVD the situation at this particular office was not at all pleasant and promises to meet targets of other sections were often made but never materialized since these did not consider their colleagues in other sections as their customers. One of them referred to a colleague in another department as the king of empty promises. And indeed he was since he kept on promising to deliver but never did. Lessons can be learned for the situations as portrayed in this DVD.

Does this have anything to do with our local state of affairs in respect of the Nationalist administration, more precisely with the government of Prime Minister Gonzi? Yes it does. We can go back many years and take a look at electoral manifestos, or we can also re-read a number of budget speeches and have a look in official speeches by government ministers, including the prime minister. There is one thing in common – promises. We can say that the PN is the king of empty promises where they pledge to put the customer first and then, when they win the election, or rather manage to deceive the voters to win a few more votes to snatch victory, afterwards they forget all the promises and do the opposite.

The list is endless and everyone can make his or her own list. In its oath soon after the last general election the government pledged to work in the interest of the Maltese citizens. But the first decision that the ‘new’ government took was to give Cabinet members a €500 increase per week and all this behind our backs. To the contrary, a solemn promise - which in my opinion was one of the turning points of the last election: that is to decrease the percentage of income tax from 35% to 25% - has still not been implemented.

Excuses are being made by the Prime Minister but he knows that when he promised this cut the only reason why he said it was to win votes and nothing else. Of course, he wrapped this promise in a beautiful cover and said that Malta will ease out of the recession; Ah, the recession, but I forgot that during the electoral campaign the prime minister never acknowledged that we were in a recession.

But conveniently, from time to time, he mentions the international recession to excuse himself for not implementing his formal promise to reduce the income tax and as such our families will have more money in their pockets to make it at least easier to make ends meet.

We had other promises in other sectors such as education. Today we all agree that education should be the pillar on which we build our society. But today we take it for granted, while in the past it was only the Labour Party who believed this from its inception. The Nationalists believed, and maybe some of them still believe, that education is for the chosen few. They also say that they managed to remove the numerus clausus from the education system. It is not the case and at our University and MCAST we have students being told that they cannot be accepted and some have been told to change their preferred subject. I invite you to speak with hundreds of students who over the years, and even today, are being excluded from continuing their studies.

These students are being left out of these courses because the government is not giving enough resources to higher institutions. But notwithstanding all this the government of Lawrence Gonzi pretends to be the perfect and most effective government.

Another promise which was voiced by the leader of the PN himself when he became the leader of the Nationalist Party was that he will bring change for better in politics. He promised to start doing politics in a different way. Now some years have passed and we all can say that this change was for worse. If someone is still in doubt I invite you to consult the last speech at the Granaries in Floriana where the PN celebrated Independence Day. It was a divisive speech and coming from the Prime Minister himself does not augur well for the coming electoral campaign.

When time comes for the electorate to choose by who to be governed these empty promises and much more need to be kept in mind for them not to be deceived once again.

Carmelo Abela is Labour Main Spokesperson for Social Policy

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