New dog, old tricks

The Opposition's education spokesman, Carmelo Abela, last Friday week, during a family literacy activity in Senglea by the local council and the Foundation for Educational Services, released a press statement on behalf of his party regarding illiteracy (The Sunday Times, August 31).

Once again the Opposition is using statistics and figures in a haphazard manner hoping to score a few cheap points.

Mr Abela said that every year 2,000 students were finishing school without the necessary skills to live and work in today's world, and used the SEC yardstick to justify his claim.

Mr Abela took this claim as dogma and without verification quickly jumped to the conclusion that these students could neither read nor write.

Mr Abela not only misinformed the nation but also used a literacy activity to insult the many people who invest time and energy to teach our children and to ensure that every student is given the opportunity to leave the education system with at least basic education.

The Labour MP knows that the government has, on many occasions, in Parliament and outside, given all the facts which show that this allegation is completely unfounded.

Before the general election one could understand that because the Labour Opposition had given up on raising valid arguments it was clutching at straws by using such figures to score some points. But repeating them now, actually increasing the misinformation, shows that this is a strategy based on misinformation, misuse of figures and statistics, bending the facts and outright lies.

This misinformation strategy is perpetuated by the Labour media which are not only failing to provide their audience with balanced information but are also giving a biased and excessively negative picture of the state of affairs.

Throughout this summer the Ministry of Education invited the press at least 23 times, but the Labour One news agency never reported the events, turning up only a couple of times to obtain comments on the Opposition's misinformed partisan statements.

This is surely not the way to treat the public. This year the Opposition had the opportunity to gauge the effectiveness of their strategy and it was clear with two electoral consultations that the nation is not willing to accept misinformation and outright lies.

The Opposition seems to have already lost sight of this warning. Is this yet again a case of a new dog playing old tricks?