Good as it is, the budget for 2016 like its predecessors and those which will follow, depends for its success on how well the government manages to implement its proposals. The reference to the “government” in this instance covers those administrative and political structures that are tasked with carrying out new projects launched by the budget, as well as with the government’s ongoing activities.

It is no longer quite enough for individual ministries and departments to be well run. What happened over the years was that increasingly, almost all government initiatives needed to involve more than one or two government agencies.

Actually many government departments must improve greatly their operations if they can satisfy popular expectations regarding their efficiency. They are still keyed to old style management methods, even if most have switched from using paper files to digital ones.

It seems like it’s too difficult a challenge when departments and ministries have to coalesce around new projects that to succeed, demand stringent coordination between them. With time, it has become apparent that lack of proper coordination between different agencies is a major defect in the operations of successive Maltese administrations.

Let’s hope that the 2016 budget will also manage to help overcome this problem.

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Russia in Syria

I fail to be scandalised or upset because Russia has intervened in the Syrian civil war. The US and sundry European powers did the same before the Russians. The latter have interests that are just as vital for them as those of the West, and they are equally under threat as a result of the Syrian conflict.

Rightly or wrongly, Russia argues that its position rests on a more solid legal basis than that of others. It was asked to intervene by the Syrian government which to date is still a full member of the UN. And if Assad is removed, Russia asks, who would the West want to replace him with?

Europeans, Americans and Russians are taking too long to arrive at an arrangement by which they can agree to present a common front against the threat of a barbaric terrorism that has exploded in recent years. All sides carry some responsibility for the impasse in which they find themselves – and not just the Russians, as the “West” would like to pretend. Russia needs to be given full recognition as a major power with legitimate interests in the areas that surround it.

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Morand

Paul Morand’s fame came to be defined mostly by how his career ended. He served as ambassador under the Vichy government during the Second World War. Following that, he remained in Switzerland as an “exile”. Many years later, as a writer, he was elected to the Academie Francaise. The French government under de Gaulle did its best to prevent him from taking his place.

He wrote with lucidity, straight to the point. I just finished his “Galant Europe”, written during the twenties of the previous century: a collection of short stories that describe European society after the end of the First World War, when the Bolsheviks were consolidating their power in Russia and Germany was sliding towards Nazism.

His stories resemble Scott Fitzgerald’s from the other side of the Atlantic, told sometimes with the sardonic power of Curzio Malaparte. It’s an intriguing mix.

What a pity that Morand’s socio-political preferences were so unappetising.