The unofficial election campaign hardly feels any different from an official one, and there is a good reason for this. Government has lost its parliamentary majority, it is keeping the chamber operating like a talking shop where no major decisions are brought to a vote and is groping in the dark for a solution to get the 2013 Budget through the House before December sets in.

Unless we are going for an official election campaign running in parallel with our Christmas shopping and carol singing, the latest feasible 2012 election date would be 1 December, which means that Parliament would have to be dissolved by 29 October. If the government plans to present a budget to act as the platform for delivering a “see what you will miss if you don’t elect us” message, this would mean that the budget will have to be read in Parliament next week.

Risking presenting the Budget later in November could mean that we spend Christmas in hard election campaign mode, as the government would be in caretaker mode, once Parliament is dissolved following the failure of the parliamentary vote.

A political grinch may ruin our Christmas. Budget presentation in the last week of October is not out of the ordinary. The last five budgets for 2008 to 2012 were read in parliament on 15 October 2007, 3 November 2008, 9 November 2009, 25 October 2010 and 14 November 2011. All showed a wish to wrap up the budget debate in parliament before December set in and there is no reason why it should be different this time. But strange things happen before an election.

The long-expired collective agreement for public sector employees is signed, the car park concession gets renewed for the long term, car spaces are rented back at premium prices for a period that makes you wonder if we will still be using cars when it expires and private hospitals are rented out by the government with an option to buy and a commitment to upgrade and improve.

All these strange things have a common thread. They all sacrifice the taxpayers’ interests in the government’s quest for votes that might help it cling on to its long-held tenure in power. All these measures are tactically positive but strategically hopeless.

In the cacophony of an election campaign everything becomes tactical. Everything is measured in terms of the impact on voters’ psychology and ultimately how many votes such measures are going to gain or lose. The long-term strategy is discarded by the wayside and sacrificed to the political necessity of the here and now, rather than the strategic gains for a sustainable future.

There should be a strategy within which these tactical measures should fit. But if the strategy is what I think it should be, these measures go diametrically against the strategic objectives for which we should be aiming.

With the health service, we should be aiming for more active private sector participation in the provision of health care so that the patient has a more competitive choice. We should be moving towards launching a national health insurance scheme whereby everyone has to be covered by at least a minimum basic cover and where the premium is to be paid on a commercial basis, except that the premium should be deductible against taxable income and those who do not pay taxes should be fully refunded for the portion for which they do not benefit by tax credit.

Mater Dei would then be offering commercial services chargeable to the national insurance company or to private insurance, if the client opts for private insurance. But the individual would have a real choice between public and private hospitals, and Mater Dei would receive an efficiency boost of good management, because it will have to operate like a commercial firm – safeguarding its cost base and protecting its revenues.

The acquisition by the government of St Philip’s moves completely in the opposite direction. Rather than creating space for private sector health services, we are extending the public sector into operations that hitherto were in the domain of the private sector. In the meantime, those who opt for private sector health services are more dependent on a dominant supplier because, through government intervention, another private operator is permanently wiped off the board.

Government has no priority for proper strategy. Its priority is for finding an immediate alternative to another winter of confusion at Mater Dei with congestion in the Emergency/Admittance department and patients’ beds in corridors. Rather than admit total failure in planning and opt for re-opening more wards at St Luke’s as a recovery hospital, the government opts for a solution that delivers the least value for money to the taxpayer.

To add insult to injury, the government insists on proceeding with the deal, notwithstanding the fact that a clear majority in parliament demands postponement until it is scrutinised by the National Audit Office (NAO).

When I was the chairman of Mid-Med Bank in 1997-1998, the bank’s board had approved a deal to acquire an adjacent building to extend the Centru Ruzar Briffa. I had personally insisted on sending this deal for prior vetting by the NAO before making a formal commitment. Rather than admiring the transparency, I was criticised by PN quarters for favouring the seller, who happened to be an ex-client of my earlier consultancy. The deal was scuppered as the NAO took its time and early 1998 elections made it imprudent to conclude such a deal during an election campaign. Time has shown how expedient it would have been for the bank to proceed with the deal as our successors, after substantial and costly redevelopment on the same footprint, had to rent out part of the extension at premium rates.

Now those who were critical of the deal, in spite of it being sent for prior vetting by the NAO, are turning things on their head and insist on paying first and auditing later – even though their board of directors (Parliament) is demanding otherwise.

The same applies to the public sector collective agreement. This country needs to incentivise public sector employees to seek better and more productive fortunes in the private sector, where we can get more value added per employee with which to grow our GDP to support our national debt and our social security programmes.

The strategy should therefore be to make public sector employment less attractive compared to employment in the private sector.

Public sector employees have a security of tenure that private sector employees cannot even imagine and this security should be reflected in lower remuneration packages and inferior conditions of employment.

Yet public sector employees are regaled on election eve with a six-year agreement with guaranteed annual increases over and above the normal increases within their scale; they are awarded more flexibility to work shorter hours and they are allowed to enjoy their summer half-days, which are practically unheard of in the private sector. And all this when most of the public sector continues to operate without any performance metrics, where the lazy can take easy cover behind those who do an honest full day’s work without risk of retribution and certainly without risk of job loss, redundancy or dismissal.

Strange things happen on the eve of an election – and we have probably seen nothing yet.

www.alfred-mifsud.blogspot.com