Editorial

On the same day that the Labour Party delegates approved a "plan" for economic and social revival, Competitiveness Minister Censu Galea announced plans for the drawing up of a national reform programme. It is all very well to draw up plans and programmes but what counts most is action, not words.

Far too often we spend more time drawing up plans and programmes when, generally speaking, quick action, at least in those areas where the problems have been identified years ago, is all that is needed. One of the major problems is not identifying what needs to be seen to but lack of determination, or commitment, to get on with the job in hand.

Labour leader Alfred Sant has been talking of the party's idea to come out with a plan for the regeneration of the economy for months on end now. Yet, a quick glance at the document - more a pamphlet than a plan - shows that there is very little, if at all, that is new.

The document is peppered with mantras that the Labour Party leader himself has been coming up with over the past months. A key thread running through the document is the need for Malta to win back competitiveness in a globalised world and in a liberalised market. But is not this exactly what the country has been talking about for quite so long now?

The success of the plan, says the party, depends on a strong will and a collective approach to the work that needed to be done to make Malta more competitive. In this way, the country would be able to attract new investment and generate greater wealth.

Was not the government showing strong will, for instance, when it called for the elimination of entitlement to days off for holidays falling over weekends? That measure, by itself, was not going to push Malta to the forefront of the Lisbon league table from the bottom place to which it plunged but it at least showed the kind of determination the country needs so badly today.

The social partners, who were generally expected by the country to come to an agreement over a social pact, did not play ball and chose to close both eyes to the reality of the situation, which the Labour Party speaks about so much in its document. So much so that the government had to go its own way and enforce the measure by law. In its document, the MLP says that a new Labour government would set up an inter-ministerial coordination unit, which would also involve a strong representation of the stakeholders, in order to make Malta more competitive. Would not this be, in a way, a duplication of effort to that being made - or, more precisely, to the one that ought to be made - by the Malta Council for Economic and Social Development?

Key stakeholders in the island's development effort are the trade unions. True, they have their own sectoral interests to look after but if they fail to put the national picture into their equation, as they are doing now, their sectoral interests will shrink. This will in turn go against their own interest and the interest of the workers as a whole. Despite all their protestations to the contrary, it is this that the trade unions are failing to realise today.

Plans and programmes, however meaningful they may be, will not deliver the goods on their own. Only a clear national commitment and work towards achieving set targets will.