Roamer’s column

“You should have heard the oohs! and aahs!” – thus Professor Higgins describing Liza Doolittle’s impact on high society in the musical version of Shaw’s ­Pygmalion; there were none to be heard last Monday as the finance minister unveiled his budgetary plans for 2011 because there were no surprises. The document was simply-crafted, intelligent, responsible and pointed Malta seamlessly in the direction of growth, jobs and investment.

Having said that, I now hope the plague I wished upon the finance minister last Sunday – that “he be visited by frogs and slippery things like that for the rest of his life” if he went for a deficit less than 2.9 per cent rather than place a few more euros in peoples’ pockets; he went for 2.8 – will not materialise; but take precautions, Tonio Fenech, like barring doors and windows. My incantations have been known to work even after I tried to ­neutralise them.

No doubt the Leader of the Opposition will rubbish Budget 2011 tomorrow, but then he did that to Budget 2010 and predicted all manner of cataclysms. As a matter of fact, a few potential catastrophes did threaten us during the year: the ugly sight of job losses in companies affected by the recession (instead, unemployment fell); a slowdown in tourist arrivals because guests to our country may have had to tighten their belts and give their holiday abroad a miss (we’re heading for a record year); investment from overseas was jeopardised (instead, scores of millions of euros were poured into investment, bonds taken up, share issues swallowed whole and then some).

Wise and timely interventions on the part of the administration in the form of financial help to beleaguered industries, aggressive marketing of the tourist product, and best of all, marketing Malta as a safe investment location during a period when little was safe, paid off.

Budget 2011, unflappably competent in content and direction, will improve on last year’s performance unless unforeseen demons descend upon us. The details are there for all to read; most of them require no in-depth analysis. Some will serve as take-off and warning points in future discussions, but overall, Budget 2011 was well thought-out, wide in its perspective, narrow in its single-mindedness: fiscal consolidation, vigorous promotion of Malta as a tried and proven investment base (ideal for overseas companies interested in outsourcing), continuous creation of skilled human resources, provision of skills re-training to upgrade the workforce and the take-home pay of those who choose to improve their skills.

The aggressive marketing of Malta as a tourist destination, the emphasis on education, which received a massive €330 million (from crafts to arts to technology to research and innovation) on a healthcare system that many countries envy for the high level of its infrastructure and superstructure – this received €332 million, the continued upgrading of the country’s infrastructure, from roads to public transport to the environment in general and, throughout, a mature understanding of where Malta needs to arrive not only at the end of next year, but 2015 and beyond.

Compare and contrast with the measures the UK’s Chancellor George Osborne has had to take to re-invent Britain; compare and contrast with our pre-1987 socialist budgets when these were presented just before Christmas and festive they were far from being.

That the projected deficit is 2.8pc when 2.9pc would have done will, it is clear, give more power to his elbow when he fashions out 2012 – all things being equal; a supposition it would be foolish to make. All is forgiven, Tonio, but don’t expect any bouquets tomorrow evening; a sop here and there in an attempt to demonstrate even-handedness, but not a single rose.

The icing on the sugar was provided, appropriately enough, on Budget Day when Bloomberg quoted a Lisbon Council Study showing that “Germany and Malta, the euro region’s largest and smallest economies, (were) alone in boosting their competitiveness and fiscal sustainability in the past five years”. This was followed by an A+ from Fitch and an AAA from some other body. Eat your heart out, Joseph Muscat.

To conclude this piece, it may be worth pointing out one revolution that has taken place, one that rarely gets a mention; Lawrence Gonzi pointed it out, last Tuesday. Over the past eight years there has been a decrease of 8,000 workers employed with government and an increase of 14,000 jobs in the private sector. Compare and contrast with 1986 when, on the eve of a general election that he lost, a socialist prime minister increased an already bloated public sector by 8,000 employees.

What happened?

Newsweek’s Evan Thomas must be worried. “ (Barack) Obama standing above the country”, he wrote 15 months ago, “above – above the world. He’s sort of God.’ That re-incarnation may well re-incarnate into a lesser spirit next Wednesday in the American referendum. They call it mid-term elections, when roughly one-third of 100 Senate seats and all seats in the House of Representatives (435) are up for grabs. The exercise is a remarkable feature of the American system of democracy when voters are given an opportunity to applaud or deride the President’s performance, in this case Obama’s.

Polls and pollsters have been known to get it wrong, of course, and Republicans plus the Tea Party may yet, by some quirk, be denied control of the Senate and the House of Representatives – in which case Obama may retain the lofty, transcendental status to which Thomas promoted him.

But at one stage Gallup was projecting a 13 point lead for the Republicans (on a high turnout), 18 points if the turnout were low. An election analyst was looking at a Republican victory of historic proportions in the House of Representatives with the Senate in the balance.

Perhaps more stunning were a CNN poll and a Washington/ABC poll. The first reported a surge of popularity for – wait for it, George W. Bush, who left office with the third worst rating of any President in the country’s history. The poll had Bush and Obama almost level (47 to 45 per cent in Obama’s favour, a two point margin down from 23 a year ago); and the second showed nearly 25 per cent of Democrats saying a return to Bush policies would be good. There can surely be no greater “ouch” than that. So, whatever happened to God?

Presidential hubris, I suspect; perhaps even a sneaking suspicion that he really believes he is God, else why, to point one finger, did Obama on two occasions leave out the word “Creator” when reminding an audience “that all men are equal and that they are endowed” (by their Creator omitted) “with certain inalienable rights”.

Also, vastly irritating to Americans is a failure to hear what they are trying to say, understand what they are feeling. Obama did just this when he told an audience that part of the reason “facts and science and argument does (sic) not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we’re hard-wired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. And the country is scared”. I wonder why; but this was another way of telling voters they were hillbillies. What’s with these guys?

How about they are unimpressed with the way Obama seamlessly melded into the Washington scene, he who flagellated the American political establishment and vowed to change the way politics was done? How about the elitist attitude (Democrats are liberal and intellectual, Republicans, dumb, the remainder whacko) that wrapped itself around the White House since his election?

How about his refusal to countenance changes to a healthcare bill that lost the backing, before passage, of an overwhelming majority of stupid Americans? How about his reaction to the Gulf oil-spill – perhaps his Katrina moment? His willingness to engage with anyone and everyone and the reluctance of others to engage in a meaningful sense?

How about the satisfaction they felt when Bill Clinton remarked that he “planned to do about one stop for everybody that helped Hillary run for president” and when he started his campaign trail “realised that a lot of people were mad and even more confused… so I just loaded up and started strolling around”. How about a vision of Hillary Clinton smiling all the way to the White House in 2012, the same gal who, after she lost out to Obama, led him later to intone that this was “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal”? I mean, how super-God can you be?

Outsiders will have the impact of a drop of rain in a volcano on next Wednesday’s outcome. I chose to write about it (and, for now, not about Fr Rene Camilleri’s recent, in-depth talk on the ­Charter of the Rights of the Family) only because what happens there is important for the rest of the world. I happen to love America and find it interesting that a President who only two years ago was walking on water, will soon discover that it was mud, after all.

Increasing the US federal government by almost a third since 2008 worried millions of Americans who harbour an instinctive fear of Big Government.

It was probably this, more than any other factor, that has turned American voters against a man they now regard with more than suspicion.

They are also questioning why he is forever apologising for America when he could reasonably employ himself holding others to account. Perhaps the last word should be Jay Leno’s: “President Obama said today that change is hard. You think it is hard now? Wait until the House changes in November”.