There has always been one huge difference between the political parties which lord it over us: Labour in opposition fights its political battles locally, the Nationalists in opposition do it both here and abroad. Labour keeps its criticism within domestic bounds, the Nationalists do not mind sullying Malta’s name abroad.

During nearly 25 years in opposition, the Labour Party has always fought its battles here, on home ground. It makes its arguments for our ears only. But do you remember the 1980s? The Nationalists took their gripes everywhere they could: to the Council of Europe, to Italy, Germany and the UK, and everywhere else they went. They even roped in foreigners to fight for them and shamefully sought to persuade Aldo Moro to stop helping Mintoff’s government. They had no qualms about making Malta look dirty abroad.

That was when they were in opposition. Now they are doing it even in government. Not because they want to, but thanks to their incompetence.

Was anything ever more humiliating for us than to hear the Mayor of London boast he had rid the English capital of the bendy buses by selling them to Arriva in Malta, where streets are now clogged with these behemoths? The PN have excelled themselves this time: not only have they bought second-hand buses, they have bought used buses that do not suit us.

Some commuters find it positive that these bendy buses are so huge, because they can accommodate so many more passengers. But if you have three small buses, they would take as many passengers and would clog up the streets less, because being smaller, they still allow traffic to move. With the bendy buses on our narrow roads, everything stops until they start moving.

But, of course, a bendy bus is cheaper to operate. It is just one driver moving so many more passengers, you see. You need three drivers to drive three buses.

This situation we owe to Austin Gatt, and to Lawrence Gonzi’s obvious weakness in not being able to sack him. Austin Gatt is not the Minister of Infrastructure, Transport and Communications, he is minister of just one sector, he is Minister of Failures. He has failed in all the big projects that have come his way: the Fairmount contract, which broke Malta Drydocks, for instance; The BWSC scandal; the SmartCity failure; the donation, absolutely free, of public land worth millions to a private company, GO and the ferry terminal at Cirkewwa, yet to be delivered, though it has been so many, many years in the making. There have been others, too. And now we have the latest, the public transport reform.

This disastrous reform has not only cost the country millions and millions of our tax money, it has now also brought us to ridicule abroad, in the UK of all places – the largest source of our tourism market. How can Lawrence Gonzi keep a straight face when his administration delivers such incompetence?

I would pity Austin Gatt for being unable to get one thing right, but how can you pity someone who has so much cheek and is so arrogant, in spite of being such a bungler and so ugly?

C. Galea,

RABAT