Milking the wrong cow

Just picture a Midwestern rodeo, the kind that was visited by the intrepid Borat and imagine that the rider is Minister Austin Gatt and the bucking steer is Malta. At one point the government spokesman about the energy tariff prices, Chris Said, declared, maybe in not so many words, that there was still room to manoeuvre and that the retroactive rates that were to be calculated as from October 1 were not actually final. Needless to say, not a couple of days passed and Dr Gatt held yet another of his press conferences and, lo and behold, nothing had changed, nothing. He's back on the bucking bronco big time. The tariffs will still be retroactive to the beginning of this month, some big industries that employ thousands will be "helped" in order to prevent layoffs; about 20 were mentioned and, of course, the 30,000 "social cases", for which read those clever guys who have learned how to milk the system. Well anyway now it's done! Who sows the wind reaps the whirlwind.

Joseph Muscat is conducting the chorus of disapproval and a non-political protest is due to be held, which, if it is being convened by Dr Muscat, can hardly be apolitical can it? Je ne comprends pas!

Typically, the government incumbents have reacted by harking back to 1997 when the Sant government raised electricity tariffs when oil was a thumping $12 a barrel and that Dr Muscat, then aged 23 or thereabouts, whose written words return to haunt him like the ghost of Banquo, declared, toeing the then party line, that the Sant price-hike was the greatest thing since sliced bread or something of the sort.

Well, by raking up slime about what Dr Muscat wrote when still a mere idealistic nipper is not going to throw up enough dust clouds to make us all forget what a recalcitrant and irresponsible attitude the PN government has taken with regard to energy conservation and its alternatives. The pundits have been harping about it for years and years. They were at worst regarded as lunatics and at best ignored. Just to show how ignorant the man in the street is about the crisis that has been simmering dangerously like a sleepy volcano for so long, that when George Debono arrived at Castille in his best suit to present his painstakingly studied and detailed report about energy conservation, but, wait for it, on his bicycle, he was practically arrested. Nowhere in Castile is there anywhere that one can leave one's bicycle and the praetorian guard on duty defending Lawrence Gonzi and the Cabinet from pests and terrorists was not going to allow Dr Debono in with his bicycle! I assume that a proper bicycle bay has now been installed in the PM's office and at the other ministries, especially Dr Gatt's!

Many people are asking who the PM is: Dr Gonzi or Dr Gatt? People firmly believe, of course, that something of this import and magnitude is the business of the PM to look into not a mere minister. I suppose this goes back to the days when Ministers of Finance got very excited about the price of tinned tuna! They did, you know. We over 50s all remember it well, don't we?

By the time this article appears, the Baġit, as it is so quaintly called, will be old hat. Nobody will really care what's in it really. Minister Gatt let the tiger out of the tank a full week before. Compared to the energy tariffs anything else is mere detail and even the price of tinned tuna pales into insignificance!

So while the price of oil plummets, we Maltese have to collectively make up for some book-keeping shortfall of €55 million. I have repeatedly advised Dr Gonzi and Tonio Fenech several times, not only in this hallowed column, which, presumably, neither of them read, but to their faces, that all they need to do is slap a tax on empty, derelict, uncompleted or abandoned property that is being held for speculative purposes and, hey presto, the €55 million will disappear as if hexed by Aladdin's genie. By Tuesday, while you are reading this and I am telling myself "O my god, just look what I wrote!", we will all know whether they remembered my brilliantly lateral idea!

Speaking of lateral thinking, I simply cannot understand how when the global byword in "creative thinking" is Maltese, yet another Debono to boot, it is Brussels that has chosen Edward De Bono to be ambassador extraordinary in 2009, which has been designated The Year of Creativity. Apparently, the Malta government has largely ignored Dr De Bono to the extent that he actually wrote about it in this very paper! Incomprehensible when one thinks how "creative" we must all become to keep warm and to get from place to place from now on thanks to Dr Gatt. Believe you me that is going to be far more difficult than making up the €55 million.

kzt@onvol.net