When one’s arguments start to hit home, Government apologists come out with their usual bullying tactics. Frankly I don’t mind and they will not stop me from doing my duty as the Opposition’s Shadow Minister for Finance.
For some time I considered the articles of Lino Spiteri, the shortest serving Finance Minister and now opinionist, as in the main attempting to seem objective, even though somewhat and understandably Labour leaning. Lately it seems Lino Spiteri has become one of this Government’s main apologists, clearly having a mandate to massage public opinion in the run up to this Budget.
It seems he now has little time to write about what this Government should be doing, a theme he was fond of writing about under the previous administration. Rather today he seems more inclined to tell this Government what not to do. A case in point is his continued insistence on this Government not implementing the previous Government’s plan to further reduce income taxes to the middle class.
His second mandate clearly is to lower the bar as to what the previous Government had achieved economically by attacking the credibility of my writing, which I sense is worrying this Government. The test of time will reveal the previous Nationalist Administration as the administration that had to face the largest world economic and financial crises and thanks to its walk – and not talk – came out with flying colours. When the international crises broke out we could have opted to run away and leave the hot potato in the hands of an inexperienced new Labour Government who had just instituted a new leader. We had the best excuse with the parliamentary difficulties – the likes of Franco Debono – but we would have been utterly irresponsible to do so. That Labour Government would have failed like so many other more seasoned Governments did in Europe and – just as in 1998 – people would have put us back into Government after a short break. We took the responsible route and did not leave after four months or a year. We faced the crises, we saved jobs and we passed a healthy country on to this new Government with democratic dignity. We stood up to be counted.
And counted we were by the international institutions of repute like the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, credit rating agencies and the ILO. Allow me to be very brief and quote some clear statements from their reports on the achievements of the previous Government.
Fitch’s downgrade is because this Government has been slow to act and come out with its programme
In 2011, the Times of Malta reported a Bloomberg report which reported a study by a Brussels-based research institute singling out Malta and Germany as “the only two EU member states which in the past five years have boosted their competitiveness and fiscal stability”. The International Monetary Fund in its 2012 report clearly commended Malta for the “effective action to correct its excessive deficit, shoring up confidence in Malta’s public finances”; it went on to describe the deficit reduction programme post the international crises as an “impressive turnaround”.
When the President of the Commission José Manuel Barroso visited Malta in October 2012, he made an unequivocal statement that “Malta’s financial stability is an example to other European countries” with Malta being one of the first countries post-crises to come out of the Excessive Deficit Procedure, a place this Government took us back into.
The ILO Report in 2012 stated that: “By Q4-2012 only Austria, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Malta, had higher employment levels than pre-crisis”. From that date the gainfully occupied remained on the rise and we managed to create over 20,000 new jobs despite the biggest ever crises this world had ever seen. I am proud to say that under the stewardship of the previous Government, in which I was the Minister for the Finance, Economy and Investment, while Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Italy and so many other countries collapsed, we held our heads high and managed to have the shortest recession in the EU, higher than EU and eurozone growth rates, growth in exports, tourism, the financial industry as well as the fastest fiscal consolidation programme, record employment rates, including a significant improvement in the female rate of gainfully occupied and managed to still invest heavily in health, education, our social obligations, in the infrastructure, environment and the economic sectors that continued to spur growth to sustain all this. This we did and no Lino Spiteri articles can alter these facts.
This Government is not of the same vein, and it did not take too long for Fitch and other credit rating agencies to realise. It is not about talk but about walking your talk as the Prime Minister stated so boldly in the UN General Assembly. Fitch did not downgrade because this Government decided to create a buffer for itself by over accruing 2012 expenditure and increasing the deficit to 3.3 per cent. In 2009, we were at 4.6 per cent and we were not downgraded. Fitch clearly stated in its report that the downgrade is because this Government has been slow to act and to come out with its programme, and this inaction led Fitch to conclude that the deficit would even be higher this year. No surprise with the mishandling of public finances by this Government that has gone out of its way to bloat the public sector with jobs for its boys and wives of ministers, and not having enough money now for medicines, education and other essential services.
The excuse to the poor Joe and Mary Borges of this island was that the previous Government left no money for what they were entitled, but for the wife of Minister Konrad Mizzi they managed to find €800 per week (plus travel, lodging and whatever else).
Tonio Fenech is a Nationalist MP and former Finance Minister.