Negative bonuses

Those who are convinced politicians do their best to put them off from taking a serious interest in public debate will become more so with the prevailing confrontation over the future of the annual bonus/es paid to employees.

The Nationalist Party and the MLP are at it hammer and tongs, trading insults wrapped in estimates of large millions of liri as if this were the fundamental issue that should grip the undivided attention of a bemused public.

The Nationalists started it. Last August the MLP published a 'draft discussion document', titled "Towards a Plan for Economic and Social Regeneration". It carried an Introduction by the party and Opposition Leader. He wrote that the Labour leadership, conscious of the need to draw up a plan for Malta's economic and social regeneration, asked a panel of experts and consultants to present their ideas for the basis of such a plan.

The Labour leader considered the report prepared by the panel as one of great importance because, he wrote, it considered the biggest challenges faced by Malta's society thoughtfully, carefully and recognising how the huge problems affecting the economies and societies of our times were being faced in Europe and beyond.

He also wrote in his Introduction that the document did not bind future Labour policy, but was intended to stimulate serious discussion, within as well as outside the MLP.

The report itself was a mix of styles, evidence that there had been various inputs. Parts of it indicated hands used to writing in a political style, as if they were preparing a manifesto. Other parts indicated the detached analytical approach of those who write academically, or for professional submission or publication.

There was much description of local and foreign developments, interpretative in the 'political' inputs and 'comparative' in the 'analytical' sections. The approach was also reflected in the conclusions.

Aside from the expected underlying criticism of the Nationalist governments' performance, in essence there was little that related to differentiating principles. That added to the growing feeling that over a large area of political alternatives it is quality and performance that are most at issue. The "how" rather than the "what".

As with every such document, there was quite enough to latch on to for whoever wanted to seek weakness in the report. That is what contrasting opinions are all about. There were also, I felt, too many hostages given to fortune, which will demand redemption from a Labour government were they to become official policy, or if reiterated by official spokespersons of the MLP.

The Nationalists did not go out of their way to dissect the draft. Then, six months after it was offered for scrutiny and discussion, a UHM official, responding to the GWU in the collapse of the trade union front over public holidays and the social pact, said that the MLP had proposed to abolish the statutory bonuses.

The PN gratefully took up the point. The bonus charge of the heavy brigade began. They linked it to the Labour leader's declaration that the government should gradually depreciate the Malta lira by some 10 per cent, which he followed up with a gratuitous declaration that, in the current circumstances, a Labour government would have devalued the lira without much ado.

The sally into exchange rate policy, it was clear, was not based on any policy discussion within the Labour Party. Not a few muttered that this was the VAT story all over again. The Nationalists almost fell over themselves with glee. They could quote Alfred Sant's precise words and let the reverberations do the damage. They did not stop there. The Prime Minister himself got the government into the bind of jettisoning the exchange rate as a policy option until the lira is tied up formally and more tightly with the euro.

The exploitation of the annual bonus proposal was far more blatant, though not original to the Maltese way of doing politics. Before the election of 1996 the MLP TV and radio stations delighted in putting out repeatedly a soundbite from a speech by the then Nationalist leader and prime minister - "ha joghlew il-prezzijiet..." (Let prices rise...).

That projected him as uncaring about price increases. The ruse was pure spin, and unnecessary at that. In a televised debate, as the then Labour spokesman on finance and economics, I had deliberately quoted the PM's full utterance - let prices rise, it doesn't matter if jobs increase - and so could point out that he was mistaken in economic terms: inflation threatens jobs.

That did not put an end to the Labour spin. The edited soundbite continued to be broadcast as regularly as the clock ticks away.

The PN and the government are far from being lost for spinners. If now they no longer have the direct services of their main master of the art, as the cruder handling of the media demonstrates, spin remains a key part of the Nationalist weaponry. The moment the annual bonus was put from the trade union side in the cauldron of controversy, the spinners began adding to and feasting on the brew.

On its part the MLP, it became evident, felt pushed on the defensive. It responded with fierce and sustained attacks on the Prime Minister for leading the bonus charge and ignoring the fact that the Labour leader had made it clear the regeneration draft was not binding on Labour.

And, after Labour's own ferreting, the Opposition Leader came out with a counter-charge of hypocrisy, stating over and over again that it was the Nationalists - the PM himself - who had proposed to do away with the annual bonus.

What is truth? said Pontius Pilate wearily as he washed his hands of responsibility for the crucifixion of Christ. Cynics in the mundane world of public debate are continuously pushed and shoved to ask the same question. As a matter of interest, the following is the truth behind the bonus charge and counter charge.

The Labour discussion document includes a section with the summary theme, "We have to create new means to look after those who cannot get by on their own". One of the more factual and analytical contributions, it centres on the assertion that the social state is the best way to protect all our citizens. "We therefore have to be courageous in our reforms," it says. "We have to see to it that schemes which no longer make a difference to the citizen's standard of living are changed to become more meaningful.

"In this context one can consider the possibility that the bonus is changed from a financial grant to employees, which nowadays does not add spectacularly to the purchasing power of the majority of them, to a contribution into a fund to protect the citizenry. This fund would be used to help persons with a disability and individuals hit by very severe illness, like leukaemia or cancer. In this way workers and Maltese families would be helping those in need without the latter having to beg for help in the broadcasting media."

One may agree or disagree with the idea, which the authors go on to expound in further terms of social kinship. But it does not equate to some proposal to snatch the bonus away from and impoverish the workers, as the PN are projecting it. Nor would it reduce the employer's outlay, since - as I understood it - they would make a contribution to the proposed fund equivalent to the bonus (or bonuses, since there are two, one for Lm116, the other for Lm52 annually).

Probably most people would prefer to continue to receive the bonus and to decide themselves how much to contribute to the less fortunate. Whether that justifies the way it has been exploited by Nationalist spinners is something else.

Surprisingly, the Labour leader rapidly washed his hands of the proposal, at least by implication. He and the MLP could have shamed the Nationalists for distorting rather than discussing a proposal that appeals to the good side of the individual to contribute to social cohesion. Instead, they replied in kind.

Here is what the counter-attack they used instead relates to...

In presenting the 2005 Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure in November the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance made public a White Paper on "reforms needed now to ensure adequate and sustainable pensions for future generations".

In his Foreword the PM said, not unlike the Opposition Leader in his foreword to the MLP regeneration document, that the recommendations being put forward were "not immutable. Decisions will only be taken following the assessment of feedback received from the national discussion and consultation process that this White Paper seeks to generate from all sectors of our society."

That is what discussion documents and White Papers are all about. In fact two ministers recently emphasised - correctly - that the government was not bound by the proposals of the Pensions Working Group.

The group was set up last June. It was a follow-up to a National Commission set up after the Nationalists returned to office in 1998. The White Paper refers to the Interim Report prepared by the commission in 2001. Subsequently, says the White Paper, the commission's chairman had presented a Working Document for discussion purposes setting out a draft new pensions scheme.

The proposals in it included that "the June and December bonus payments should not continue to be paid".

That proposal was not included in a subsequent review by a new chairman.

Sadly the political class does not hesitate to show disrespect for itself. Its members feel free to harm themselves with abandon, even if thereby they undermine a key element of representative democracy.

It would do them no harm, though, if they showed more respect for the citizenry and the people's intelligence.

This latest negative exercise in spin and alienation, now feeding on itself, does not move the political debate one inch forward. It pushes away serious discussion of the situation, prospects and alternative policies. It makes more people disenchanted with politics.