Halfway through the first 100 days of the new Labour administration, what has it got to show?
Every time a new appointment is announced, there is a rumble and an outburst from the PN side, almost like a new Etna eruption.
To be fair, and lately, there have also been instances of dissatisfaction and complaints from within the Labour camp, especially the recent announcement of the Air Malta board from one KM old-timer who probably saw himself back in the driving seat and was consequently disappointed.
This is a very broad Cabinet and each member has been given a certain amount of people in the ministry. No time has been lost in filling these posts, although as a minister confirmed in Parliament last week, they do not all come from civil servant ranks and some had been registered unemployed. It beats me how they can be of any help in any ministry.
Anguished surprise has also accompanied the revelations of husbands and wives teams (or should we rather say partners’ teams?) in various posts, especially, wonder of wonders, at Castille.
Strike me down if you want but I do remember a team of partners at Castille under Lawrence Gonzi. I respect them and I accept they were valid co-workers. The only issue some people had, though I do not think this was their fault, was that while MPs with partners were banned from the Papal Mass, this ‘team’ because of their roles, were among the very few to be allowed in St Publius Church as the Pope robed, when not even the Floriana archpriest was allowed.
Nor can I say that the staffers in Gonzi’s ministries were all university graduates. Maybe, though, the gruffness and lack of manners of the present team will be ironed out, somehow.
Given there are so many ministers, One News has been depleted as most of its people have jumped into the new roles on offer. Some people have been more blatant than others: gone are the dulcet notes of Malta Taghna Lkoll as this has become a Malta taghna biss where taghna means card-carrying Labour supporters or others who had broken ranks in the election campaign and spoken in favour of Labour.
Yet, having said all this, I look around me and see that, contrary to what many, and even I, expected, there have been no eruptions of mayhem.
What many thought were soothing sounds coming from the Labour leader in those awfully scripted campaign speeches and that these were just electoral sounds, have turned out to be real after all.
Likewise, the choices that have been made, well many of them at least, have been on the moderate side – Labour supporting but moderate. In many of the key roles where people have been changed, I can think, and possibly many can think, of far worse solutions, which so far have been avoided.
There has been, there is, a moderate hand somehow at the core of the Labour administration whose effects have been in weeding out some of the most outrageous electoral commitments and in getting the government to follow a moderate route.
We are, I said at the beginning, halfway through this government’s first 100 days. It is time for it to begin delivering. So far I am seeing very little evidence of any deliveries. The policies are still the same but the hands on the rudder are new. Some hands are even newer than others and the lack of experience shows, as too the huge enthusiasm to do something shows. However, there is a degree of responsiveness that the ‘old’ PN administration could wish it had, but didn’t.
It’s almost like what happened with the Budget: this administration is running on the Budget that was presented by the former administration and, after all the hoo-ha last year, it is the one and the same Budget that is still operative.
So too, one would think, most of the programmes and initiatives left over from the previous administration. For all that the new administration says they walked into empty rooms without laptops and computers (brilliantly deconstructed by Dr Gonzi in Parliament last week when he pointed out the government made a wrong move by removing the permanent secretaries who could offer some sort of continuity, and in some cases at least, there is some evidence a minister did not ask his fellow minister access to files and data), this administration is doing quite well, at least to judge from the many public events that have ministers (and media) running around every day like there’s no tomorrow.
Still, the people did not vote this government in just to change faces and names. I disagreed (and still do) with it at the time, but people voted Labour to get cheaper rates. That has not happened so far and it does sometimes look that its implementation is getting rather complicated.
When people look around them they still see the same issues they have been grumbling about for years. To tackle them, as at the hospital, with just ministerial enthusiasm is not enough. Maybe the Nationalists (predictably) went about things from a long-term perspective, which in the end did not deliver (think smart meters), but there must be some sort of strategy to stop the hiccups and unsnarl the kinks in the system and get it to work.
The visit by the top government delegation to Paris to pay homage and sit at the feet of the growth guru of Europe, Francois Hollande, could inspire this government to follow suit and instil some growth into the Maltese economy. I do not agree that Malta, of all places, needs to push growth, especially when the economy has been doing well with no prodding. And I am certain of one thing: we cannot, must not, waver from the path of bringing the deficit down. I also think, and I have said it countless times, that provoking a spurt of growth, by means of an expansionary policy, will only be short-lived because the extra money so generated will end up in more and more imports of consumer goods. And we have enough (and then some) of new or new old cars waiting to be purchased.
Sometimes, the old themes from the election campaign creep in again but it’s as though neither side has the stomach to go through with the diatribes again.
As the fireworks festival comes round again, and so do all the festas, and as the summer lethargy creeps in, Malta reverts to what it’s really good at – enjoying a gracious living.
The last laugh is on the government – having come up with a claim everything was bad and wrong and then easing itself into power with no changes except the identity of the people in the ministries, it is disproving its own claims. Hopefully, people will not hold it to account.
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