Vision or Socialist blinkers

Accompanying her rambling Opinion piece (Through His Eyes, October 25) Lorna Vassallo invited her readers to browse her website and answer a very pertinent question.

"Do you agree that the PN has a better vision of the future than the MLP?"

This is the sort of question, that without any lengthy preambles, invites readers to go straight for the jugular.

I obliged by clicking yes to her questionnaire and proceeded to give my reasons, which were many and varied.

Apparently Dr Vassallo has not yet read A World Without Work, by Jeremy Rifkin, to appreciate the folly and short sightedness of the Malta Labour Party and its leadership in thinking that there is any future, in manufacturing industries, for a people used to the good life.

On her next visit to any supermarket, I invite Dr Vassallo to note that sea salt and even capers are being imported from Spain. Why should a small island surrounded by briny water find it cheaper to import than produce its own sea salt and to bottle and market its abundant crop of capers?

The reason is simple, we are no longer a Third World country that can compete in labour-intensive, low-tech industries such as making hammers, shoes or jeans.

We do not have, and we do not want to have, a cheap working population, which satisfies itself with a bowl of rice in return for a long day's work.

The Nationalist Party, unlike the MLP, encouraged the study of computer science and technology by allowing IT equipment to be freely imported.

Dr Vassallo might not remember the days when under a Labour administration, computers used to be confiscated by the Customs at Vittoriosa. The present MLP leader occupied the high office of party president at the time when to be allowed to import a computer one had to declare no one will be made redundant as a result.

The PN, unlike the MLP, encouraged the study of computer science and technology by not only allowing them to be freely imported but also by investing heavily to ensure that every classroom had access to a computer.

The PN had the vision to realise that a tertiary education in IT was going to be the deciding factor for the survival of a country that aspires to take its place among the affluent developed nations. The number of university students rose from 600 to more than 10,000, covering a spectrum of specialties that are needed to advance a country from a producer of pots and pans to pharmaceuticals and computer software. That did not happen by accident.

The PN did not shy away from opening up the economy. Does Dr Vassallo remember the time when to obtain permission to purchase a colour television set for approximately four times the current prices, one had to be recommended by a friend of a friend and wait in a queue?

She may not recall the daily farce at the old decrepit airport, when am incoming flight from Sicily or England meant an influx of boxes of bars of chocolate bars and tooth paste with "particular workers" salivating for their share of the booty.

Labour's vision was to make Malta a champion scrounger for cast-offs and hand-me-downs. But worst of all was the dangerous flirtations with the worst pariah states on the face of the earth. From Libya to North Korea, from Communist Russia, to China of Tiananmen fame, to Ceausescu and Rumania. Dr Vassallo might have even seen a copy of Dear Leader, the little red book that was freely circulating in Malta in the days of Dom Mintoff's Premiership and Dr Sant's presidency of the MLP.

The PN, on the other hand, sought the company of the democratic states of the European Union, while Dr Vassallo fervently campaigned against within the CNI. I would like to ask her if she still prefers the sort of international relations the MLP always cultivated instead of our accession to the EU, now that we are seeing the advantages of membership. I think she agrees that we got considerably more than the Lm1.5 million that her CNI bed-fellows, in league with the MLP, used to predict.

To attract investment, the PN government invested heavily in this country. This administration gave us good quality potable water instead of the highly dubious liquid that used to be pumped to unhygienic roof top tanks from bowsers. With a clear vision of the future, the PN also gave us a power station and a telephony system, essential infrastructural elements for the introduction of a high tech economy.

Solving unemployment by setting up labour corps under military discipline or employing 8,000 people in the public sector, as her CNI guru had done (in vain) prior to an election, was all the imagination that Labour proved to be capable of.

As Dr Vassallo can see from official statistics, the public sector is being slimmed down to correct the excesses of past Labour mal-administrations. At the same time, the take-up by the private sector is more than compensating for the reform in the public sector.

It is also worth noting that this administration never had to resort to a wage freeze or a four-day week.

This government believes in the advantages the consumer will have as a result of free, unfettered competition, as opposed to socialist distortions caused by protectionism and government interference.

These are the policies that saw Malta advance from a pathetic little island, trying to force Japan to comply with its silly import and export exchange protocol, to the dignity of equal membership within the EU.

Judge the PN on facts... then the vision of a bright future with the PN in government becomes more clear.

Mr Agius is a PN member of Parliament and an electoral candidate for the seventh and 11th districts.