Telling the truth

We should all be very grateful to Alfred Sant for finally deciding to embark on a campaign pledging to speak the truth. Dr Sant has every right to criticise and put questions. He has every right to demand answers and answers he shall receive. But, then, speaking about the truth, he is in duty bound to be truthful to the same truth, something which, apparently, Dr Sant the politician is proving incapable of, trying to deceive the people on many occasions and on many fronts.

He deceives when he turns to people who lost employment in factories that have relocated their business to countries where the cost of labour is very low and hiding from them the realities of globalisation.

He deceives when he makes people believe they can, in this highly competitive economy, just lie idle, not bother to learn, not improve themselves and still have a job guaranteed for life.

Deceiving is when you do not believe in the capabilities of the people, not pushing people to do better in whatever they are doing.

Dr Sant deceives when he says he believes in EU membership, that he believes in an open economy but then says he wants to reintroduce price controls.

If it were up to him we would not enter the euro area; we would instead devaluate the lira. We would not have SmartCity and secure 5,600 jobs. If it were up to for him, this would just be another speculative project.

Deceiving is when you do not provide new work opportunities for laid off workers as a result of a restructuring economy.

Can Dr Sant tell us which projects he managed to undertake during his 22 months as Prime Minister, apart from Bugibba? Shame on Dr Sant and the Labour Party for not even minimally recounting the endless number of projects this government, with Lawrence Gonzi as Prime Minster, is carrying out.

Managing a country is about priorities; it is about getting the money to implement as many projects as possible. If it were for Dr Sant, we would not have managed to secure €855 million over five years in EU aid. It is indeed a question of competence. It is indeed a question of carrying out numerous projects on time, on target and with limited budgetary variance. Indeed, sometimes there are projects that encounter hitches and get to take longer than forecast, either because of lack of financing opportunities or because of uncooperative parties to a project or both.

This happened to be the case with the Ta' Qali crafts village project but, again, deceivingly Dr Sant fails to speak the truth. He fails to mention that when the Labour Party was in government in 1997, it managed to overturn all the work and plans that had been carried out by the Nationalist government since 1993 on Ta' Qali. Dr Sant does not say that his government did not even guarantee a place of work for all the tenants. All plans had to be drawn up from scratch in 2000, separate promise of sale agreements entered into with each Ta' Qali hut tenant - thus making the strongest legal guarantee of work within the village. This involved agreeing on terms and conditions with all tenants after lengthy discussions and even agreeing on apertures, size and migration plan for each and every tenant to ensure the minimal disruption possible to the tenants themselves.

Likewise, Dr Sant deceives when he does not call a spade a spade but rather turns and twists facts to suit his arguments. Deceiving is when he tries to link the record high tourism trends to a hot summer rather than acknowledging the clear government strategy towards product branding, to promote Malta as a hub for culture and entertainment, to introduce low-cost airlines and carrying out reforms to make the national airline compete and lower prices.

He is deceiving when he tries to sell the plan of the New Beginning, when it is in fact nothing more then a rehash of all government measures already in place. Trying to make youth believe in some sort of new housing schemes when they are already in place. Making u-turns on golf courses, euro adoption, SmartCity and a lot more.

Dr Sant keeps trying to sell the same old recipe of promised tax cuts and pocket grants without telling us poor folks how exactly does he plan to make good for this extra burden on the country coffers. Likewise, he is deceiving when he does not explain that the higher food products is an imported phenomenon and that oil prices have reached a record high.

He often tries to depict an image of a spend-thrift government wasting people's money in parties, receptions, consultants and travel. Dr Sant should know better: Most of EU travel is 100 per cent reimbursed. He should know that consultancy expenditure is, in the major part, financed by the same management fees connected to EU projects that ministries undertake. How can Dr Sant not realise that ministerial parties, in Christmas or on other occasions, have long been stopped?

Speaking about transparency and corruption, I ask, what does the Labour Party have to hide by not publishing its accounting records.

Dr Sant does not have a vision for this country. He fears the idea of getting elected to power and fears having to face citizens after conducting a campaign in which he is trying to promise anything to everyone. As history shows, he is unable to manage power as this easily gets to his head. Quoting First Lady Hillary Clinton: "Get prepared for it and don't be surprised by it. When you've got no vision of how to make the world a better place for yourself or your children, then you go negative".

The Labour Party has now been repeating the slogan of a New Beginning for the past years. Dr Sant has been leader of the Labour Party for 17 years and he still hasn't managed to bring about a new beginning to the MLP. Perhaps to be credible, the Labour Party should, first and foremost, change its DNA and its leader once and for all because he became obsolete on the first day of his appointment. Perhaps the Labour Party and its leader will stop persisting in deceiving people.

Mr Vassallo is Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business and the Self Employed.