The duty of an Opposition is to monitor the government of the day in order to ensure, among other aims, that governance of the country is conducted on the right lines. It does this by provoking debates about issues of bad management, arrogant decision making, abuse of power, and conflicts of interest on the part of public authorities.

One can hardly deny that currently the Nationalist Opposition and its supporting media are driving hard on such issues. Still, beyond the merits or otherwise of claims made, one can hardly help feeling that actually the Opposition finds itself in a bind. One could argue correctly that when the economy is flourishing, it is difficult to get traction behind accusations of improper governance. As of now, the Maltese economy is growing at an encouraging pace.

However the PN’s dilemma goes deeper than this. The Opposition itself does not sound credible.

For many years, the PN in government sought to ignore all problems of governance that were raised – and there occurred quite a number. Or it just rolled over them. That the same people who did so in the past are now crying scandal seems incongruous.

Which is why hardcore pro-Opposition columnists in the “independent” media, give the impression that their contributions are ridden with bile and angst when they write about alleged or real abuses.

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Schauble and the European Commission

An interesting controversy has erupted in Germany after the agreement between eurozone member states and Greece.

German finance minister Schauble has come out with the claim that there is a need to curtail the ways by which the European Commission and its President Jean Claude Juncker can intervene in euro matters. Schauble is insisting that parts of the euro zone’s protective structures should be set on a stand alone basis, outside the control or influence of the Commission. As a result, the decisions they take would reflect economic and financial factors that are relevant to the zone’s proper management, and not the various political calculations cooked up within the Commission.

Schauble was less than appreciative when during the negotiations with Greece, Juncker devised technical “solutions” that undermined his position. It is likely that in coming months, this story will proceed further.

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In reverse

For some time, one could note that the following pattern has been regularly developing, and though I don’t yet know how to account for it, I am still not persuaded it’s just coincidence:

Since Malta first started to keep a fixed exchange rate for its currency with the euro, and later since it adopted the euro, our inflation rate has trended in a direction opposite to the zone’s average. When the latter shows price acelleration, in Malta indicators point to a price slowdown. When as in the present situation, euro zone inflation keeps on low, in Malta price rises follow a relatively higher trend.

It could be that our peripheral position accounts for this but why? What transmission mechanisms are causing it? The “phenomenon” has not been given much attention yet.