My Domenican friend John Xerri teaches that in the Old Testament a false prophet is one who sanctifies the status quo, invites people to accept reality as it is since this is "the best of all possible worlds" and denounces genuine prophets who hanker for "unrealistic" new heavens and earths.
Unfortunately some contributions to this paper, including some editorials, fit perfectly such description, as evidenced in repeated attacks on the GWU, the MUT and the PL (the other unions and Alternattiva Demokratika are implicitly and undemocratically treated as small fry, and hence not worthy of consideration or attack).
Most contributions boil down to a plethora of meaningless buzzwords, clichés and common places concerning the government's apparent "vision" and the union's credibility (not to mention outright lies like claiming that the event is organised by the GWU and/or the PL). The pseudo-arguments brought to sustain these include:
a) The GWU should have sat around the MCSED table even though, as the editorial a few days ago admitted, the decision had already been made and "...the union had good reason to feel irritated with the way the government treated the MCESD members over the issue. The council should have been brought into the matter before, not after, the tariffs were revised". The question arises as to what is the use of sitting around a table, if the decision has already been made? If tables are simply meant to voice one's opinion, in discussions which have no weight whatsoever on the decisions being made and amount to nothing but an exercise where one simply expresses one's view, cannot the same exercise be carried out from the street?
b) The other unions who sat round the table and took to the streets only after the sitting are also attacked by some contributors for...not calling for further sittings. The futility of the previous meetings and the government's undemocratic attitude (making decisions before discussing) apparently require more of the same futile medicine. (Had Moses persisted in this tactic and kept discussing with the Pharaoh instead of adopting a more militant stance, the Jews would have remained in Egypt to this day.) It is those who are reacting, rather than the government who committed the original act, that are invited to refrain and show their goodwill.
The government is never invited to freeze the new tariffs, so as to show its goodwill.
c) Unions are told to be concerned about jobs and difficulties, if not daftly invited (in the case of MUT) to thank the government for the initiatives it is taking in the education sector (without noting that, from an educational perspective, the new tariffs will increase the problems educators in difficult environments encounter, since most of these stem from social problems, including poverty). Such meaningless statements not only beg the question as to whether the tariff in question will "safeguard" jobs, but imply an old-fashioned, non-European and narrow vision of what trade unions are all about. Modern European unions are not simply concerned with wages and jobs. They are concerned with protecting, if not enhancing, their members' standard of living; something that will be negatively affected by the new tariffs. Hence they cannot not be concerned with "politics" in the truest sense of the word, meaning the "affairs of the state/society".
d) In contrast to all this, the consistency and credibility of a government that on the one hand claims to believe in traditional families, while on the other burdens concrete families with further costs and sacrifices in the name of "economic realities" and other mantras, is never questioned. Nor is the belief that the new tariffs are "inevitable" and that further subsidies are impossible ever contrasted with the fact that our public coffers are able to finance Renzo Piano's €80 million plans, the actual project, the refurbishment of a square and a week-long extravaganza to celebrate the most ordinary of renovations (What would have happened had Lawrence Gonzi renovated Piazza Navona or St Peter's Square?) and other perks of the new aristocracy.
But then it's the old story with right wing acolytes; money is short only when it concerns people's goods and welfare.