Stampeding the country

The Bondiplus talk show on the proposed hike in electricity tariffs was good entertainment. The subject tops the public concerns list and Lou Bondì was drawn to it like a moth to the flame.

Some useful facts and figures could be gleaned from the fracas. Quite probably Bondiplus was the most significant source of information available to the public on this crucial matter. Wow.

Nearly everybody was there: employers, employees, industry and commerce. Private consumers had to make do with indirect representation. Those who are not part of the above categories, pensioners and the unemployed, were not represented. In the battle royal, the MLP was part of the snarling phalanx facing Austin Gatt's smug smiles. Nobody seemed to notice that the Greens were not there.

Judging by Bondiplus, Malta seems to have no consumers' union and no Green party, no voice for the economically vulnerable, no voice for the one political element that gave energy matters a top priority long before price hikes made energy the first thing on all our minds.

Alternative energy, now booming as an industry across the globe, might have had a mention: eco-jobs, energy saving, reduced fossil fuel dependence.

The smugness with which Dr Gatt brazenly justifies his fait accompli was more than revealing: the PN won the election in March, the PN runs this place alone. The Malta Council for Economic and Social Development (MCESD) is a puppet show. This place only looks like it is part of the EU.

Dr Gatt's five options have been in the making since April in a KPMG study/proposal. It gets bounced on the MCESD in October with a two-week deadline for choice among the options offered or to cook up an alternative. The message to me is that the government wants to humiliate the social partners. It desires their furious reaction.

There was no socio-economic impact assessment (SEIA) of the various options presented by the government because Dr Gatt claims to be intimately acquainted with the circumstances of the most directly affected industrial stakeholders. There is no way that he can begin to guess what the effects on other players will be, how they will affect one another and who will feel the pressure most, how and when.

Smugly dismissing the unanimous complaint was a deliberate challenge: I am here for the next four and a half years and you can do nothing about it. In any self-respecting country it would have caused Dr Gatt's political demise. Not here.

He was superb, a flashing chameleon. One minute he tripped up Kevin Decesare by challenging the hotel industry's eco-credentials and he turned greenish for half a moment, then he retold the unfair advantage he has over people with minimum wage when enjoying a flat government subsidy. He turned red without a blush at that point. Blue with gold stars, he advised that, under EU rules, capping must go, then he was reminded of his violated SEIA obligations and lost it again. Most of the time, he was as black as his party's badge and loving it. Asked whether he thought it right to consult the social partners in the way he had done, he coolly answered yes. It was deliberate provocation. Great television.

What the other participants seemed to lack was the nerve to get up and leave the show. There they were caught. Who would dare to be the first to stand up? Who would follow him? How would it be perceived?

It was a remake of the whole MCESD process; in fact of every other so called consultation process in the country.

There is no real consultation going on. Those who participate in the consultative institutions are providing the sultanate with a convenient façade. They dither about putting their foot down. They tell themselves that something is better than nothing, then that a pretence is better than less. Now that even the pretence is gone, I wonder what they are telling themselves to justify their bogus status in our political charade.

All the social partners, the opposition and the Greens are agreed that the change that must come ought to be mitigated to avoid shocks to the system. The PN is naturally inclined to act that way also. So why is Dr Gatt deliberately opting for shock tactics?

Charles Mangion seemed to suspect that it was all intended to shuffle costs around and keep up appearances in the next budget. My gut feeling is that it goes much deeper than that. We are being deliberately stampeded about energy costs while the suppression of alternative energy options has become nothing short of bizarre. Why?

Dr Vassallo is a committee member of the European Green Party.

harry.vassallo@europeangreens.org