Publicity stunts have always been Labour’s favourite communication tool. They are either splashed all over the island on billboards or performed on Sundays by the Labour leader himself.
Labour’s latest gimmick is a job guarantee to school leavers. It is all well and good to promise something but it is another kettle of fish to actually deliver the impossible.
How on earth can Labour guarantee jobs unless it is planning to invent jobs specifically to accommodate these “unqualified” 16-year-olds? Is Labour going to reintroduce the military Labour corps it gave birth to some 30 years ago in a failed attempt to camouflage the unbridled unemployment rate it had then created?
The workers of those infamous Labour corps Dirgħajn il-Maltin, Baħħar u Sewwi, Iżra u Rabbi etc. were under military discipline. So, considering that one of Labour’s 51 solutions is to give members of the disciplinary corps the right to join a union, would these recruited 16-year-olds be given the right to strike? Heaven forbid! If Labour is so ready to guarantee jobs, education and training, can it give us a guarantee that education at all levels will remain free for all? Can it give students a guarantee that their stipends will not be touched and that it will not reintroduce the student-worker scheme, which is disturbingly being advocated by so many Labour candidates?
Will Labour give us a guarantee that all health services and medicines will remain free and that it will not re-introduce a tax on prescriptions as it had done when it was last in government? Will it also give us a guarantee that the pharmacies of our choice will continue offering the sterling service they are offering today?
And, once we’re on the subject, will Labour guarantee that it will not pull us out of the EU? Labour’s chilly attitude vis-à-vis the EU leads me to wonder whether it secretly wishes we never joined. Has anybody noticed that Labour never ever bothers to mention or acknowledge the €800 million EU committed funds that are financing a plethora of capital projects!
Former Labour Prime Minister Alfred Sant, who froze our EU application, is still today openly sceptical about the EU. His parliamentary speeches leave no doubt in anybody’s mind that he does have “regrets” that we are EU members. And, lest we forget, it was Joseph Muscat himself who strongly campaigned against EU membership and urged Iceland not to become members.
Moreover, Dr Muscat insists that Malta should threaten to use “its veto where unanimity is needed in the EU... or sporadically even in other areas… until EU takes notice (March 17, 2009). He also told the government that “you can’t go sit there and say you will never use the veto…veto is part of the solution” (The Sunday Times, June 14, 2009).
Dr Muscat has even gone as far as comparing the EU to a paralytic! Yes, if you don’t agree with Labour then you become its target.
This hypothetically progressive movement led by a supposedly liberal politician just cannot tolerate different opinions. Personal compliments (!) flung include: double faced, classroom bully, liar, big headed, arrogant, fascists, incompetent, etc.
Dr Muscat even consecrated a Nationalist MP, a bishop. It is a shame that not only did he feel the need to insult a parliamentary colleague, he went as far as usurping a Church designation to do so!
Procrastinating is another Labour favourite. Its deplorable stance on pension reform is a case in point. Recently, the chairman of Labour’s Fondazzjoni Ideat demanded to know “why people aged 38 will have no adequate pension…” (June 6). I can only retort: Ask your own party why.
When, six years ago, the Nationalist government proposed the pension reform, the Labour Parliamentary Group’s official reaction was: “… it does not seem that a crisis in the sustainability of the pension system, as it stands today, will crop up before 2025/2030 (July 8, 2006). Simply incredible!
I dread to think what would have happened to pension sustainability had the Prime Minister listened to Labour, past and present!
Thankfully, he did not and, in spite of the opposition’s strong resistance, the pension system was reformed in 2007 and retirement age will be gradually raised to 65. Unfortunately, totally abdicating any shred of responsibility and foresight, Dr Muscat went as far as summing up the re-evaluation of the pension system “a form of austerity” (July 2, 2010). How blind and short-sighted can Labour be?
Instead of acknowledging the long-term non sustainability of pensions, Dr Muscat has now given his solemn guarantee that he will not raise the pension age, insinuating that he will never even consider doing so. But, he warns, in his beloved alarmist and sensational mode, that the Nationalist Party is plotting to raise it further (June 7). That is an outright lie.
We know that the government has taken timely measures to neutralise the non sustainability of our pension system but what has Labour done so far apart from opposing anything the government recommends? More importantly, what is Dr Muscat’s vision for the future? Does he really listen to himself when he says that “economic growth, coupled with increased female workforce participation, would make raising the retirement age unnecessary” (June 27). Assuming he has any serious plans at all, will he, for once in his sorry political life, work with the government on this ultra sensitive issue, for our children’s sake!