Smarting mysteries

Is it smart to surround the SmartCity project with mystery before it has even got off the drawing board? Is controversy justified over whether the promoters actually consulted the opposition, and if they did, when and how?

The Leader of the Opposition says he was consulted, informally, and gave the nod that a future Labour government would support the project. The Investments and IT Minister initially poured thinly camouflaged scorn on that claim.

Apparently having taken the bother to check with the promoters, through "his team", he declared he was assured there had been no consultations with the opposition.

I understand neither the Opposition Leader's coyness over saying who had consulted him, nor the minister's insistence to the effect that the real promoters had left the opposition in the dark, and the claimed consultation might be a scam.

The way foreign investors seriously approach a serious intention to set up a serious project is normally as follows. They identify, directly or because investment promoters approach them, a location suitable for whatever investment they appraise would give them an acceptable return relative to the risk involved.

They check the availability of the human, communications and infrastructural resources they would require. They discuss with the authorities responsible for the location, to the extent that they need to do so, such as if there are tax, land provision or incentives on offer.

They sass out, with the assistance of local savvy and their own diplomatic contacts, whether the political climate is not temperate, and how to ensure that their potential investment will not be prejudiced by a change of government.

In the case of the proposed SmartCity@Malta project, its extent and dependence of public land and government support and back-up (educational, bureaucratic, and such like), timely and formal consultation with the opposition, it being the alternative government, would not only be natural, but also necessary.

In fact, bi-partisan consultation, if not, better still, promotion would be a selling point by a government going about trying to attract investment promotion in the best possible manner. None of the present Cabinet team was directly involved in the way the package of financial legislation was passed through the House of Representatives with rare bi-party consensus in the mid-1990s. All of them know, though, that to this day a major promotional point of Malta as a centre for financial services continues to lie in the fact that the political parties have a common position in that regard. Investors, aside from the opportunities and assurances now existing through Malta's membership of the EU, do not have to worry about what risks would affect them in the possibility of a change of government.

The question should not be whether the SmartCity promoters consulted the opposition. Rather it ought to be why, according to the Leader of the Opposition, did they do so "informally"? Why, according to the Investments and IT Minister on Saturday (The Times), did they not really do so at all and the Opposition Leader is believing someone who misrepresented himself as speaking for the investors?

We should also be asking ourselves whether the fall and fall into the prevailing puerile level of politicising everything should continue.

If the SmartCity project does materialise and take off - which will only be confirmed if big information technology and communication names locate in it - it will signify we are growing up in investment terms. Is it not high time that we also begin to grow up in our political lives?