Do you remember the recent fuss about what will happen to our foreign financial reserves when we join the Eurozone? And what about the relentless charges on cost overruns on the road around St Paul's Bay, the road to Mtarfa, the road to San Lawrenz, the Gozo ferry terminal, the new hospital and on and on?
For the next general election the Labour Party is ramming the message that the current government is incompetent. In contrast, a Labour government will be bursting with talent, with the doctor in business administration at the helm - from Harvard no less. The small library of scientific and technical reports that has been prepared by the nameless experts is testament to the party's collective wisdom.
The past tells a different story. Among other things, the just published Lino Spiteri collection of reminiscences refers to the time when Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici succeeded Dom Mintoff. It was felt that the country simply could not let Mr Mintoff's infinite talents go to waste. So the superman was to manage the Central Bank's external reserves, the bulk buying scheme as well as the purchase of oil.
Minister Lino Spiteri managed to block Mr Mintoff from taking over bulk buying that was part of his ministerial responsibilities. Apparently, while the rest of us struggled with shortages and low-quality products, Mr Spiteri was occupied hearing Bertu Hyzler, a former Labour minister, complaining that bulk buying deprived his poodle from the kind of food it was used to!
The way things turned out, the country would have been less poorly served if Mr Mintoff had been made to take care of the bulk buying business, purchasing tinned corned beef, canned milk, luncheon meat, and instant coffee, while keeping him as far away as possible from the Central Bank. Instead, he was allowed to take on the management of the country's reserves.
Big losses followed over the next two years, although Mr Spiteri does not indicate the amounts involved. I understand that Mr Mintoff was caught exposed in the Reagan dollar devaluation and this cost Malta a loss in external reserves of about Lm88 million in a few days. In today's money this would be closer to 130 million - liri not euros; perhaps more if one adds on the rate of return earned by the Central Bank since then.
Too bad for the country, but not for Mr Mintoff who came out unscathed. Mr Spiteri threatened to go public on the scandal, but it was too late. Mr Mintoff was relieved of his duties. The Ministry of Finance then obligingly covered up this unmitigated financial disaster by revaluing the Central Bank's gold holdings that had been acquired at a relatively low price by the Borg Oliver government when the Central Bank was set up in the late Sixties.
There are many unanswered questions. First, can any Tom, Dick or Harry walk into the Central Bank to practise his hobby? Does Mr Spiteri remember what the then Minister of Finance had to say, before and after the disaster? There are those who would jump off the bastions after something like this. Not in this case. There was no inquiry, no civil or criminal action, nothing. All we get is just over one page in Mr Spiteri's book!
I wonder what the electorate prefers: having an extra Lm100 million (or whatever) spent on the new hospital, reconstructed roads and other projects, or would it rather have the money used to train the former prime minister in the alchemy of finance, to groom himself into another George Soros? It is worth noting that one who was a close collaborator of Mr Mintoff in the days of this financial debacle is now one of Alfred Sant's advisers. And Dr Sant dares accuse the present government of incompetence!
On that occasion, the damage was only financial. No one was physically hurt, at least as far as we know. But you cannot say the same about the Egyptair horror story. The members of the Cabinet were called by the PM to the control tower to deal with the hijacking of the passenger plane.
Lino Spiteri writes: "We were told of discussions with the ambassadors to see whether any of their countries were willing to send help. This was one of the reasons for the presence of the ministers, because of the implications for Malta's neutrality... None of us wanted US forces to come near Malta. We understood that, if we agreed, a team of British soldiers trained against terrorists could come. In the circumstances, speaking for myself, that's as far as I felt we could concede. Malta's neutrality vis-à-vis the two superpowers should not be an impediment to British help, as long as everything was under the authority of the Maltese government."
What follows is a short and cryptic paragraph: "The impression that specialised British soldiers were available came from empty (fieragh) words, as empty as what started to be uttered among us ministers, like whether there was a sharpshooter in the Maltese armed forces who could shoot the hijackers when these were being handed their food." The rest is history. Egyptian commandos stormed the plane, and a disaster ensued. That's the bad news. The good news is that no harm befell the Constitution.
I got the impression of a control tower full of mumbling and do-nothing ministers, who could only think clearly about the neutrality provision in the Constitution, but obviously hopeless in crisis management.
Years earlier, Mr Mintoff was told that his threat to remove the protection of limited liability from the shareholders of a bank was unconstitutional. The story goes on that Mr Mintoff replied in pedestrian Maltese: "I don't give a **** about the Constitution". Fast forward to the Egyptair incident: those Labour ministers in the control tower were not about to let the survival of the passengers and crew defile the integrity of the Constitution!
On the subject of competent governance, the socialists let the infrastructure go to the dogs, for example leaving most of us with little or no water for years on end. The telephone system was up to junkyard standards. Computer technology was suppressed, out of a Neanderthal fear that it would cause unemployment. Of the miles of roads that successive Labour governments built, there wasn't one metre that was up to any sort of standard.
On the matter of political incompetence, in 1998 the most recent Labour PM botched the consumer tax system and managed to get into a pitched battle with Mr Mintoff over - of all things - a yacht marina. The battle cost him his office. He was incapable of holding on for a full term. He did what was unthinkable to the rank and file, quitting in midstream.
Can you think of anything more incompetent?
A Happy Easter to all the readers of The Sunday Times.
micfal@maltanet.net