A mystery tale

The week brought further twist and turns in the effort not to let SmartCity be a spurious pregnancy. It has become a mystery tale worthy of an Agatha Christie how the Maltese government tangled itself up with shrewd Dubai businesspeople. It remains a partial mystery who laid the idea to locate a spanking ICT centre in Malta. Some still say it was hatched in a legal brain.

The Investments and Information Technology Minister half suggested the partial mystery that, if the idea came from anywhere at all, it was from within his private secretariat.

Private parts in public bodies, or public bodies in private parts? Whatever: The government became too clever by half about the business possibility that followed. It proclaimed pregnant hope before the seed was sown. The Prime Minister teased with a Gee-Whiz-Wait-for-this-Biz suggestion that a bouncing baby might be born down south.

His Investments and IT Minister does not tease. He proclaimed, way back in March, that a baby had indeed been conceived. It would grow into several thousand jobs. It was another mystery, the then impending local elections aside, why the hard-nosed, no-nonsense Minister made that claim. He spoke of a conception and birth where no coupling had actually occurred. Of exact gender before any scan could be made.

Not even the base of the nuptial bed, in the form of agreed heads of agreement, was in place. They did arrive, amidst further assurance by the government that the smart baby would be like no other. The Minister held propelled hope even before he had met the touted partner. Whether he remedied that or not with one or two quiet visits to Dubai, makes little difference.

As in small deals, so with big ones. If one side shows so much ardour that it boasts about the fruit of the outcome before a contract is signed, the other side will hold out for more. That is what Tecom, the other intended in the marriage, has been doing to its suitor, the Maltese government. It is ironic that Smart is the brand at the basis of it all. The government has been anything but.

During the week the government felt its anxiety state was about to end: A final deal was in sight. Rumour placed a Maltese businessman with experience in the Freeport, and a member of the Investment and IT Minister's private secretariat on the proposed board of directors that would, at long last, confirm conception had finally taken place.

The mood swung before the weekend. Tecom's reluctance would not go away. Despondency returned. No mystery in that. The Dubai investors will not lift the bed cover unless they get whatever tax breaks and long-term assurances they feel they can exact from the suitor's committed eagerness. The stance is as ancient as the beginning of commerce itself.

The abiding mystery is that the government failed to anticipate the obvious - the more it tried to be clever domestically, the more it became foolishly weak abroad. That is not to say the deal will not take place. Were it to fall through, the Minister of Investments and IT, as well as the PM would end up holding a baby called Resign! They cannot afford to be sunk by their own hype.

A deal will be struck. The government will present the outcome as a great success. May it indeed be so. To determine that, the ultimate deal will have to stand up to ongoing critical scrutiny. As a start, the partial and bigger mysteries that will have led up to it will have to be unravelled...