When is honesty the best policy?

At present the Nationalist Party leadership seems to be following the cynical recommendation: "Tell it how it is. When all else fails, honesty is the best policy." They are now telling us that the structural deficit is a problem. The shipyards and other public companies cannot go on surviving on taxpayers' subsidies forever. The state has serious problems financing its public welfare system like health care and pensions. The country must regain its competitiveness to attract new investment and create jobs.

None of these words were displayed on the PN's bill-boards during the electoral campaign. None of these words were articulated in mass meetings or political gatherings organised by the PN. The PN's message a few months ago was: public finances are on a sound footing and the country can look forward to a prosperous future and a better quality of life for all.

Just a few days before the April general elections, Dr Eddie Fenech Adami was boasting that "In the 1999 budget a plan of action was launched to reduce the deficit to three per cent of GDP. This plan is being implemented and the targets are being met earlier than predicted." (April 6). In March the prime minister reported that the Nationalist administration had reduced the deficit to Lm78 million and was on the its way to reducing it further, year after year.

During the months of the referendum and general election campaigns government did not publish any statistics about the state of public finances. These official statistics would have shown that the deficit was in fact growing. The Nationalist Party wanted to conceal this from the public. At the time, honesty was definitely not considered the best policy. Last March Dr Fenech Adami said: "The country should not have a government that states something one day, and something else the next day out of expediency."

On August 23, 1998 Dr Fenech Adami was pontificating that "the Water Services Corporation, Enemalta Corporation and Gozo Channel should not operate for profit but to provide a social service." Those words seem very remote now that ministers denounce subsidies that corporations and public companies are given because they are operating at a loss. Gozo Channel has cut back drastically on its services. Ministers are castigating employees in some of our public companies and casting them in the role of vampires bleeding taxpayers.

Selective honesty

After spending years throwing money at public companies and corporations, financing mismanagement by persons appointed by the PN and happily tolerating unacceptable work practices, using taxpayers' money to acquire electoral consent, Ministers are now turning on PBS and shipyards employees accusing them of getting Lm10,000 to Lm12,000 a year of subsidies per capita. What a difference from the pre-electoral and pre-referendum rhetoric.

On the last day of February this year Dr Fenech Adami said that "Government had prepared an eight-year plan to make the shipyards viable... Today the Drydocks is much more efficient than before and there is a very good workload. The government agreed with the EU to keep on subsidising the Drydocks up to 2008 and Government has no intention of sacking any workers."

On the eve of another election, August 25, 1998, Dr Fenech Adami had said: "I assure Drydocks and shipyard workers that their employment and future under a Nationalist government is secure." Fourteen years ago, way back in 1989, the Nationalist administration had presented itself as a very generous Father Christmas showering subsidies on dock workers promising them that in 10 years' time they would be facing a bright future. Years passed, the subsidies kept flowing, but the Nationalist administration took no concrete steps to restructure the shipyards. Now the workers are being accused of squandering public funds.

The Nationalist Party in government is never ready to take any political responsibility for mismanagement, corruption and incompetence. With the help of its supporters and friends in the media and in civil society, the PN consistently sets out to project itself as part of the solution and not part of the problems of this country.

In its new-found honesty about the existence of real problems, now that the election is conveniently over, the PN still runs a communications strategy designed to shift completely elsewhere all its political responsibility for mismanagement, corruption and incompetence.

evaristbartolo@hotmail.com