Roamer's Column

Dr Alfred Sant is uniquely cynical, too. How come, I hear the innocent ask? Well, there is this problem that has been recognised by every country in the world where the State provides its people with a pension. Some woke up to it quite a long time ago, others more recently. What both have in common is that they are in agreement that the numbers of the aging population will increase. A dwindling workforce - the diminution, in some countries, Italy for example, Russia for another, a result of negative fertility rates of human reproduction - will simply not provide the funds necessary to provide our elderly with pension payments to keep body and soul together. Period.

It is a matter of time, and not such a long time at that, before a demographic situation arises where there will be too many retired people and too few young people to sustain them in their old age. To this end, governments, including our own, are addressing this problem with urgency because they have been made aware that the time to work out a solution is now. Not so the opposition leader.

He maintains that we should freeze all talk, let alone action, until after the next general elections when consultations can, as they say about battles, commence. Nor is this a throwaway line. His party recently came up with a 'paper', all four pages of it, which helped him to arrive at that conclusion. This, I may add, after the government has been having detailed consultations and receiving feedback from the whole strata of civil society, employers, unions, youths, pensioners, the whole lot - except the opposition, which contributed ne'er a word to the process. We, less the opposition, have been at it for years now.

There is no rush, in the opinion of Dr Sant. Given that it has taken his party so long to come up with that four-page squib (itself an insult to young and elderly alike), there was no rush in coming to that opinion, either. His Nelsonian eye sees no crisis on the horizon; not until 2025, 2030 anyway. But as Frank Psaila argued on behalf of his age group in a contribution to The Times, last Wednesday, that is "Precisely why he should take action, for our benefit, as it is then that we will be approaching retirement age and it is then that we will suffer from today's inaction."

More to the point, and this is why the cynicism being displayed is all the more deplorable, Mr Psaila reminded readers that in a report drawn up under Dr Sant's government - New Initiatives & Projects Group Report - October 1997 - (nearly ten years ago) - we find the following:

"Welfare gap needs to be brought under control on a 10-year time scale, as this would otherwise continue to worsen the country's financial position", and: "In line with bringing the welfare gap under control, serious consideration must be given to moving the pensionable age up to 65 years."

In bitter short, if Dr Sant started the ball rolling in 1997, the doom-laden year of VAT-CET, Malta would by now have "moved the pensionable age to 65 years". It did not, which is why the government is planning to do so in stages. Cynically, Dr Sant is claiming that we should place the subject in deep freeze with the same frigidity of mind he employed when he deep-froze our application to join the EU in 1996 and put the entire process back ten years!

The slowness of this approach is all the stranger compared with the swiftness - six months - with which he promises certain decisions taken by Government will be reversed and the status quo ante prevail should he be returned to power.

Welcome, IBM

Last Sunday I stressed the fact that Malta had entered a new phase in its development and that at the centre of this evolution was learning. Unlike war, where a country engaging in this activity is advised to beware of fighting on two fronts, the battle for learning must be conducted on many fronts. One of these fronts, information and communication technology (ICT), was given a massive boost last week when Government and IBM, which suffers from, and shrugs off the fact that it shares its acronym with an intercontinental ballistic missile, gave their signatures to a vertical strategic alliance.

IBM goes back a long way in Malta - more than 40 years to be precise. Philip Toledo Ltd, which was already showing an interest in education then, introduced the company to the island in the early Sixties. The company has since had close ties with what was then an emerging giant. Four decades later, an initiative undertaken by Philip Toledo Ltd, today one of Malta's largest ICT companies, led to the fifth such partnership over which IT Minister Austin Gatt has presided on Malta's behalf during the past four, five years.

The Big Five are now made up of IBM, whose revenue last year was in the region of 80 times Malta's current gross domestic product, and which employs more than the equivalent of three-quarters of Malta's entire population (we are talking Big, here), Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, Oracle and Cisco. Add this presence to SmartCity@Malta, which depends on a strong skills base coming from the University or MCAST, private training providers and companies with whom Government has already formed an alliance - add IBM to the mix, and only the shameless and ignorant (both exist) will fail to register or appreciate Malta's growing pre-eminence in this field.

What does this new alliance translate into? In a word, education. Lacking qualified human resources in ICT, which Dr Gatt declared "is all about people" would sound Malta's economic death-knell. In another word and somewhat drunk with hyphenation, the minister went on to describe ICT as "people-centric" when he gave out the news about this impressive addition to Malta's ICT props.

Education and, of course, skills and more skills, and business benefiting from these as IBM business solutions for small and big businesses become available, is the name of this game. Education and more openings for Maltese top graduates in R&D programmes provided by IBM at its Zurich Research Laboratory. Growth in pre-eminence depends on all this and on early training at primary and secondary schools that will be feeders to the University; with which the University must work out an alliance through career counselling if necessary.

Gee! It must be July

So there they are in that beautiful, onion-churched city by the Neva. Founded just over three hundred years ago by Peter the Great, St Petersburg was renamed Leningrad by the communist regime. Under that regime it was the city where Kirov was murdered on Stalin's nod and a wink, and whence The Great Terror engulfed the Soviet Union. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the place reverted to its first baptismal name.

The G8 plus 2 are there today - and gone tomorrow. They were faced with difficult questions. What will be the fruit of their labour now that the Israel-Palestine-Lebanon triangle of war has overturned Mr Putin's agenda? What energy will be left after they debate what has become arguably the single, gravest issue the world has faced since President Kennedy faced down Mr Khrushchev over missile deployment in Cuba? How are the G8 leaders going to reconcile the use of "disproportionate force" by Israel with the continued presence of an armed Hizbollah, which should have been disarmed as a quid pro quo for Israel's withdrawal from south Lebanon six years ago?

What red card will be shown to Iran for its contempt towards the international community's demand that it gives up its uranium enrichment process, or to North Korea, which is on the verge of economic implosion and yet manages to rattle the nerves of the international community? How will nuclear genies be prevented from popping out of some Iranian or North Korean test site? Will either country be sanctioned or will the G8 go for papering over differences because Russia and China, ostensibly committed to de-fanging the two countries will not countenance sanctions.

How worried will the G8 be at the end of this Putin-boosting summit if they receive negative responses from their host over these Armageddonesque problems? And, finally, how will Mr Putin fare as a superpower built on gas and oil? Mr Putin may not be able to rattle sabres, but he knows he can rattle gas and oil pipes snaking across Russia to countries all over Europe.

It is arguable that this is the most significant get-together of the so-called rich man's club (but where are the leaders of far richer countries than Russia?) since the series started in 1975. Both Russia and China, with their dismal human rights records, are no longer treated by the West as the pariahs they once were. Their economic leverage is seeing to that; so are the tectonic plates beneath Asia and the Middle East. These are liable to move any which way.

A gloss-over communiqué with no declared commitment to bell Iran and North Korea, no joint effort to bring about a new Iraq, no idea of how to defuse the Israel-Palestine and potentially more ominous Lebanon crisis because, ultimately, this will involve Syria and Iran, seems to be a likely outcome. The question comes unbid. If the G8 cannot get its act together, how can the Security Council manage to do so?

As usual it will be up to the United States to provide leadership on most of the issues involved, but President Bush knows he must tread more carefully than of old. It is certain he will express his determination that neither Iran nor North Korea will get away with their nuclear high jinks. His leadership will be backed strongly by Britain and Japan, and by Germany now that Angela Merkel has replaced Gerhard Schroeder. France will no doubt strike out on its own (Jacques Chirac wondered aloud whether Israel had an agenda to destroy Lebanon. He just about managed to criticise Hizbollah and what he called "other countries" - by which he meant, but dared not name, Syria and Iran).

Tomorrow we will know whether the world has edged more closely towards the fulfilment of a Nostradamus prophecy that a War will be fought between 2006 and 2112. If one does break out, it may well be the war that ends all wars. Where are the G8 and China now that the world really needs them?

Two great waterfronts

Now that the Valletta Waterfront has done to Pinto Wharf what few imagined could be done to it, what was once known by the gracious name Marina Grande is receiving nearly half a million Maltese liri to pave 6,000 square metres of the Cottonera Waterfront (eat your heart out, Fred).

There, where galleys once moored in the 16th and later centuries, and gun salutes were fired when the statue of St Lawrence passed by them along the wharf (galleys were to festas and joyous occasions what fireworks are today; and what didn't happen at the installation ceremony of a General of the Galleys?), Galley Creek slowly gave way to Dockyard Creek. The Arsenal was replaced with the Naval Bakery, which is today the Maritime Museum. And, today, an array of yachts is now berthed in this historic waterfront.

The General of the Galley's Palace is currently being restored and next to it, gulp, a hotel is being built. Everybody and his dog will be hoping that this will not be a repetition of the egregious block of apartments (glass and steel have their place. That place was simply not this waterfront) that have disgraced the top end of the waterfront ever since they were built. Do we hope in vain? Say no whoever is responsible.

Take a long, serious look at what the Waterfront Consortium was able to do with Pinto Wharf.

Whatever...

Received a couple of hospitality cards, last Sunday, yellow ones, not red. Why any card at all, though? Well, apparently it was not Beckham and Rooney I should have laid into in my requiem for English football but that fun-loving Viking for getting it all wrong. All, I asked? All, some insisted. But this cannot be quite correct.

If the Scandinavian (why not those who employed him?) signed a big, fat contract with the man and failed to curb his excesses and to red-card his failures, for English supporters and their Maltese counterparts, there is no greater wrath than that engendered by an England XI felled. Vengeance is mine, saith the pro-England supporter. I shall smite the wicked all the harder for being a Viking and the rich, Rooney and Beckham, I shall not send empty away. That was Sven I realised that I would get nowhere if I persisted. But between you and me, and I say this post-requiem, don't tell my friends, it was Beckham and Rooney who did the side in. Keep it between us.

And by the way, Italy won the World Cup. Did they deserve to? This is not the point, I am told by my friends who follow the sport assiduously. The bottom line is not to deserve to win but to win anyway. Whatever, the game was an exciting one, evenly matched and marred only by Zidane's butt. But me no butts.

And hey: 528 for 9 in England's first test against Pakistan; Collingwood, 186. Cricket is ok again.

Quote...

"To say that I was deeply impressed is not adequate. I am amazed. You and Germany remind me of the book of Genesis in the Bible. Nothing else describes the position accurately." In a letter to Hitler in February 1936 from Lady Londonderry - Making Friends With Hitler - Lord Londonderry and Britain's Road to War, by Ian Kershaw.