I still feel a deep scepticism about the effectivness of “independent” state authorities and agencies in the implementation of far reaching reforms that cut across a number of sectors.
Too often it so happens that yes, such agencies do make good and valid proposals. They start luaunching needed projects. But just as often it happens that what is begun gets bogged down and remains pending. The truth is that many objections will arise along the way as well as obstructions, not always in the open, indeed quite often coming from hidden directions. The authority would have no power to sum up and decide what should be done across different sectors. The most it can do is give advice and issue warnings. These remain on paper.
As of now, I still do not know why a mechanism quite frequently adopted in British administrative practice has (almost) never been invoked: a standing inter-ministerial committee able to take decisions and imperatively co-ordinate between the ministers involved. In the case of Malta, such a structure would need to have the Prime Minister as its chairperson. Otherwise it would end up as a talkshop. Still, there is nothing wrong with important interministerial committees being run under the personal direction of the Prime Minister. To the contrary, so it should be.
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LAMENTATIONS
Some people amaze me with the skill they have to find and employ the most hurtful words and expressions by which to pillory those they disagree with. They bring to bear all sorts of criticism and all the disdain that can be mobilised. And they do this as a matter of routine.
However then, when they themselves come under attack/are criticised/are jeered at, immediately there comes a change of mood. They astonish me again with the skill by which they lament at what is being done to them and how they are being victimised in the most obscene way.
Perhaps the greatest surprise is how they can so successfully switch from being attack dogs to becoming persecuted victims and then easily back to spraying vitriol, as if there is nothing to it.
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ECONOMIC MODEL
The economic “model” that has been followed and which is recently being referred to most unfavourably was not launched in the year 2013. It was brought into the picture long before that when a Nationalist government launched the financial services sectors and post them, internet gaming; when in the financial sector, the same government introduced VAT; and when on the political front, it brought Malta into the fold of the EU.
A consequence of this approach was that the industrial base of the country, small as it was, became significantly weaker and tourism became totally oriented to the mass market. The de-industrialisation about which I, with others, had warned happened. In this way too, the yearning felt by a large part of the Maltese population for an employment that has the same nature as a sinecure (“rent”) was provided with new possibilities.
In the years after 2013, this model was carried forward to its most logical conclusion, in an alliance with the sectors of local business that were most accustomed to work according to “Levantine” norms. Construction and intermediary activity became the basic motors for the accelerating economic growth that we experienced.