A Nationalist Party employee, Berta Sullivan, wrote a piece We Need To Know How (October 28) commenting on one of my articles They Want It All... And Now (October 3).
It is a pity, for readers wanting to make an analysis of the situation, that she missed the most important point of the article; namely that, in its eagerness to discover Labour’s policies, the government is leaving groups of self-employed people (some came to me to vent their complaints) in the dark about its own policies.
This information is also corroborated by the Global Competitiveness Report (2011-2012) of the World Economic Forum which says that we are faring badly when it comes to transparency in government policymaking.
I pointed out in my article that “the pro-government media with vested interests report none of this; instead they put pressure on Labour to tell them what it would do once in government… these so-called strategists are certainly not impressing people who are trying to make the ends of their business meet, since what the latter primarily need to know are this government’s policies affecting their businesses now”.
Thus, unless Ms Sullivan was told that these SME operators wanted immediate explanations from Labour – which will not be in power for some time – for their problems today, her writing is nothing but part of the strategy to confound issues and to try to alienate readers from such government messes. As for how the PN deals with Labour policies which Ms Sullivan needs to know about, I will give just a couple of examples from the myriad which exist. In 1998 Labour issued the White Paper on domestic violence. Immediately after there was a change in government and the PN Administration procrastinated for years before doing anything about it.
When prodded and asked what he was waiting for, Lawrence Gonzi, then Minister of Social Policy, used to say that the White Paper presented by Labour was no good and had to be rewritten. The funny thing is that, when the White Paper was finally presented it was the exact same thing drafted by Labour. It even carried my signature as parliamentary secretary.
This goes to show that the PN will criticise any policy simply because it comes from Labour, never mind that, in this particular case, it was to be the policy document which was eventually presented by a PN government.
The same goes for breast screening. The PN criticised the policy presented by Labour ad nauseam, only to start implementing a project now which is the same thing Labour was pushing forward.
But Ms Sullivan had no comment to make on the subject of the PN government implementing policies which had previously been rubbished simply because they were coming from Labour. This of course does not augur well for a mature debate on policies when the political parties launch their electoral programmes.
The tune then changes when policy comes from the PN. On February 2008 – the eve of the election – Austin Gatt spoke about a policy promising thousands of jobs with SmartCity. Had Labour made this policy pledge, the PN would have asked for substance. Now this policy is on very shaky ground. The important thing for the PN then was the feel-good factor it generated, whether it was to be implemented or not is another matter. The fact that it didn’t materialise, like many of the other policy promises made in the electoral programme, is secondary. On this, the European Commission is reported to have remarked: “Originally conceived as an IT cluster it is criticised to have turned into a real estate venture at the expense of the envisaged IT focus”.
Has Ms Sullivan checked the SmartCity graveyard and written that “we need to know”? Not quite. Perhaps she wants to know nothing about this much-vaunted area of government policy and prefers to disappoint us as an erratic and hesitant source of information.
I could go on but I don’t have to, as, for those who want to see the point, it is crystal clear. But I do understand that the PN employee needs some help with seeing this. Her predicament is comprehensible.