Reminder: The world has changed

The silly season still throws up a few comments by politicians who, as needs must, continue to address their faithful in whatever way they deem to be appropriate. Two important comments made by Joseph Muscat a few days ago caught the attention of the hungry reporters.

This paper reported on Monday that Dr Muscat believes that his party has now got its act together and is no longer haunted by internal conflicts.

Interestingly enough, this comment was not carried on the Labour printed media. I wonder why?

Was it a comment only aimed at the larger public and not the party members who in their daily dealings with the party know differently? After all followers of former leaders Dom Mintoff, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici and even Alfred Sant are still not very complimentary towards Dr Muscat about his submissive way in almost all EU matters, fearing that any deviation on his part will be brutally exploited by the ruling Nationalist Party.

But the comment which Dr Muscat will come to regret is that which was reported in all media. He criticised Finance Minister Tonio Fenech for telling The Sunday Times in an interview that the electoral promise of cutting income tax would have to wait longer because circumstances had since changed. To which Dr Muscat retorted: "The only circumstance that has changed is that the election has passed."

You have to have been living in a darkened room for the last two years, with no means of communication, not to have noticed that the financial, banking, fiscal and all sort of other earthquakes, had a huge impact on the whole world and changed every economy of every country one cares to think of. We have seen mighty banks collapsing, tiger economies reduced to ashes, huge deficits making it difficult for some countries to honour their sovereign debts, unemployment reaching frightening levels and so much more.

And all this has happened since the last general election here. But Dr Muscat declares that nothing has changed in the world which should make our government wait to honour an electoral promise made when the economic world was a much safer world, albeit in everybody's perception.

Dr Muscat will find out for himself, if he is ever elected Prime Minister, that even the most desirable and highly anticipated promise to be fulfilled made by a political party at the hustings or in the party manifesto, still has to be juxtapositioned against what is in the national interest first.

The Labour Party obviously learned nothing from the economic disaster which followed the abolition of VAT by the 1996-1998 Sant administration.

Yes, that was the main plank of Dr Sant's manifesto but the national interest, as facts proved in no time at all, was not put first and foremost. And the rest is history.

Our economy at present needs very careful handling. It is this type of care that has saved us from the worst aspects of the unprecedented economic disasters that hit the world in the last two years. And we have to be on the lookout all the time. The savage cuts in public expenditure in the UK to be announced this autumn will have an effect on our tourism.

Even as they are waiting for the worst to be known, the British people are being very cautious.

For Dr Muscat to make comments of this kind shows not only his immaturity and his superficiality but a deeper problem, which is that if taken at face value, he would put the interest of his party first and his country second. He will regret that comment.