Finance Minister Scicluna’s plan to convert government accounts from a cash format to one based on accruals is well taken and praiseworthy. Whether it will succeed is another matter.

One feels sceptical about how the idea of subcontracting the project to a private auditing company will work out in practice. The doubt is whether such a company can cope with the complexity of the challenge it faces.

I was similarly sceptical, correctly, when some fifteen years ago, to introduce accrual accounting, then finance minister Dalli launched the idea of placing in every ministry an official from his ministry charged with the task of registering each and every outlay that the government was committing itself to. That procedure was simply choked to death by the bureaucracy it generated.

There are numerous ways by which to fudge government’s spending commitments. For an accruals system to succeed, it needs continuous endorsement from the very top of the government system; and above all, an insistence that all acts and decisions that imply some expenditure, are declared and registed in some central registry.

As far as I know, no European country as of now, is running an accountability system for its finances that is truly based on accruals.  

***

Lula

Like many others, I had a huge admiration for Lula, President of Brazil over two mandates. He was working class and was very successful with policies to improve the standards of living of working people. 

One could consider his record as a brilliant model of how democratic socialism can be effective without relying on the doctrine of violence, which ends up corroding all human values.

Now Lula has been found guilty of hefty acts of corruption.

Practically all members of Brazil’s political elite have been tainted by the same charge in the enormous scandal that has raged in the country since the operating methods deployed by Petrobras came to light. The company is responsible for oil exploration and marketing.

Could it be that Lula too was on the take, while launching measures that brought about more social justice in the country?

If yes, why did he do it?

If no, what forces are so powerful that they can frame him in this way? The dilemma is trickier than when the army controlled Brazil in the most barbaric manner. Then, everybody could tell the “good” from the “bad”. You could even justify the acts of Carlos Marighella, the “terrorist”.

In a “globalised” world, former certainties are under meltdown.

***

Time

One experiences in different ways the cruel ravages that the passage of time brings with it.

I had not followed at all Billy Joel’s career since the days when his vinyl long play 52nd Street was issued.

He was not forgotten, but in remembrance, he had stayed like he featured on the cover of that album and how he sounded on the record.

So it was a shock to see him on you tube, as he appeared recently in concert, belting ballads like “Honesty”. The voice is still good.

But was that Joel?

He has “matured” greatly, like his generation and the one that preceded it, like myself and my generation, since he first issued 52nd Street.