I am one of those who used to think that after the last general election Labour had chosen a decent sparring partner for Lawrence Gonzi. Not the best choice (that would certainly have been George Abela), but adequate. After three consecutive defeats led by Alfred Sant, I thought we could now watch Labour come up with some proper alternatives from a young enough leader not to be too enamoured of the loony left shenanigans wrought on Labour and on Malta by his three predecessors (even though he led Labour’s campaign against Europe).
I have to admit I was wrong. After three years leading Labour, Joseph Muscat looks frayed around the edges and shows that he could be dangerous in times of crisis.
Take the global economic crisis. Dr Gonzi was clinically helping significant swathes of our manufacturing and tourism industries become more efficient, widening their markets and taking on more workers. He did this by rerouting into productive investment tens of millions of euros the government previously spent on non-productive subsidies that went to enrich foreign oil sheikhs and refining companies. Was it painful? It was. Did it work? It certainly did. Malta is one of just two countries in the European Union that is now creating more wealth than it did before the global crisis.
Dr Muscat’s alternative? Ever more non-productive subsidies. I would have thought Labour would by now know the basic difference between quality investment expenditure with a high local multiplier and ineffectual subsidies of imports that seep out of our economy. It doesn’t.
Many countries are now going through the terrible social consequences of their big deficits and debt. In contrast, during the last seven years in Malta, not only did Dr Gonzi lead us to the adoption of the euro but he has also been reducing the deficit to levels that have seen international financial institutions issuing glowing reports about Malta and investors offering the government large sums whenever it went to the market to borrow any money.
Dr Muscat’s alternative to Dr Gonzi’s prudent fiscal stance? More non-productive spending without telling anyone where the money would come from. I won’t try to imagine how Malta would have fared had Labour been in government with Dr Muscat running the country in this worst international economic crisis since the Great Depression.
The economy is admittedly Labour’s Achilles’ heel. What about the Arab Spring? People have been dying in several Arab countries, trying to achieve the democracy and freedom we have taken for granted in Malta since 1987. Our Prime Minister has been his prudent and wise self, championing the values of the Arab Spring, saying Gaddafi must go, and helping many countries get their citizens out of the cauldron with efficiency and compassion that have earned him praise and thanks from several world leaders. And Dr Muscat? Telling us that we need to market Malta as an alternative tourist destination, uttering eerie silence about Gaddafi, and deploying forward-to-the-past arguments that we taxpayers should pay for Maltese private businesses’ losses in Libya.
And on it goes. Take the immigration issue. Dr Muscat has been telling us repeatedly that the Italians were right in “defending their national interest”. How? Abandoning and sending to Malta hundreds of immigrants that were rightfully Italy’s responsibility to save and help.
Take the divorce issue. Dr Muscat’s liaison with Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando has been very dangerous for Dr Muscat himself, as it turns out. He has now had to tell (fewer than usual) Labour supporters in his Mayday address that they are free to vote as they wish, covering his back from a possible defeat at the polls on May 28 in a referendum he himself has brought about.
It is more than clear that Dr Muscat’s divorce declaration in the Mayday Labour do at Ħamrun has more to it than meets the eye: Labour anti-divorce supporters abandoning their own leader in significant numbers. As to Dr Muscat himself, these three years have increasingly shown there’s much less to him than his image-hucksters would like us to believe.