Lost somewhere towards the very end of the 117-page Budget speech was a very telling sentence: “We need to start taking decisions, hard as they may be, today before tomorrow.”
Of course, the grim warning was lost in the fireworks of the Budget bonanza that gave something to practically everyone, and more. The Finance Minister did not say where these hard decisions need to be taken but some are easy to guess.
The Budget would have been the right tool to announce the ‘hard’ decisions but the government shied away. The Prime Minister said the Budget justified the people’s trust in his government, although it was nothing to do with that. The economy is in overdrive, government revenue is on the rise and there is money to go round. But while the figures all look so bright, the country does not. It is in shambles.
The Budget seems to assume, or wants to make believe, the good times will roll on forever. The casualties having been falling on the wayside and five priorities emerge: the immoral state of the rental market, the collapse of the waste management system, the traffic mayhem, the environmental dishevelment and the lack of enforcement of any sort of regulation.
With a Prime Minister apparently enjoying his highest trust rating ever, last Monday would have been the right time to take the hard decisions his Finance Minister spoke about. Instead, we got a promise of a white paper on the rental market, a plan to introduce a deposit scheme on glass and plastic bottles and a promise of more and better roads.
Why is the government pussyfooting about problems that have been around for years? It feels like there is no government at all, just an administration keen to appease all and sundry, most especially on the eve of an election. It is institutionalised populism of the very worst kind and clearly immensely successful electorally, at the country’s expense.
True leadership, with a social conscience, would have seen the government move on the rent market at least. It is immensely urgent but the developers’ lobby is steadfast against control. The government knows the building industry is a major contributor to the economy, at the expense of the natural and built environment, and controlling that could crack the economic dream.
The government is far too keen to promote the feel-good factor, having after all promised that the best is yet to come in its electoral manifesto. But living in cuckoo land is simply postponing problems and they will be bigger tomorrow, as big as the rising dump in Magħtab.
Government is not about popularity but the Prime Minister seems to think so. Enforcement is weak everywhere. The utter failure of the country’s waste management schemes is indicative of where the government should be focusing, whatever the electoral cost.
Yes, there are hard decisions and it begins right there on the jam-packed roads. The traffic situation gets worst year after year and the only real immediate solution – public transport – is chaotic and often unreliable.
There is no way of sugar coating a decision when it is a hard but necessary one. It just needs to be taken and explained. This country has a popular Prime Minister but it is about time he starts acting like one.