Cor! Strike us down! You could have fooled us. There have been two substantial reports published over the past days and they come out pointing fingers and bad-mouthing the previous administration and finding fault with its achievements.

First we had the Auditor General who drew up a report on fuel procurement.

After many days in which we were regaled with tidbits every day on what went wrong with the previous system, we learned that the supposed minutes of meetings of the Fuel Procurement Board, were just the scribbled personal notes of one board member. Moreover, we found out that no one from the Audit Department has met, or investigated members of that same board.

Next we had the publication of the report by the Management Efficiency Unit at OPM on the Marsascala Family Park, which has now been closed down by the government. The report said that the family park had been decayed even before works there had been completed. There is a lot to say about what has been revealed in these reports.

As for fuel procurement, surely the system that was used needs to be tightened up. And surely the rule should have been that this all-important committee engaged the services of a secretary and kept minutes. Fuel procurement absorbs quite a lot of our GDP.

Going on to the Marsascala park, the people who thronged there in the few weeks in which it was open do not seem to have disliked what they saw there. Nor does it seem any of them were worse for wear from inhaling fumes, as the government had claimed at the time it closed the park.

The public garden at Tigne was opened some years ago, and this after the unfortunate and typical Maltese way of doing things. In this instance, it meant toiling through the night before the opening, doing things improperly at the last minute, with things having to be redone later. There were claims that on the eve of the inauguration, toilets were still being installed and hastily tiled, on soil. When confronted, the minister (at the time) had flatly denied this.

But later on such hiccups were remedied and today the garden is beautiful and attracts people, especially children, at all hours. So too, the garden at Pembroke. No one even thought of closing down any of these just because things were not right on Day One.

Yet that is what this government has done and now the people of the South have been deprived of a beautiful park where they could enjoy themselves.

In a bid to bolster their decisions in these regards, the government commissioned the reports that have been mentioned and these, as said, found fault with the work done by the previous administration. But they would, wouldn’t they?

The long-suffering people of Malta, however, can see things for itself. It knows and takes into account a healthy dose of skepticism when faced with such reports. The reports were commissioned by a government which when in opposition built its battle-cry on claims the previous government did nothing right.

And with this government in office finding the going rather hard, the people who drew up the reports, being government employees, very predictably sang from the government hymn book and came down heavily and negatively on the previous administration.

If one were to ask the people whether or not they believe these reports and similar ones, one would surely not be surprised if the majority of people express skepticism on such and similar reports.

The problem is that while for the first year or so, the government in office can get by through blaming the previous administration, it cannot continue to do so for ever. This kind of political fuel usually runs out of steam after a year or so.

After that, people expect the government to start delivering what it promised.

In both cases, there is no mention made that the people who were in charge of carrying out these projects were interviewed before the reports were written.

So now it is the opposition’s duty to submit appropriate parliamentary motions in so that each case is exhaustibly analysed and examined by the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Representatives. In that way, witnesses can be called in and questioned and confronted. And that goes too for people like Austin Gatt who now find it convenient to say they are not in politics any more and want to enjoy their retirement.