The Leader of the Opposition has a problem when it comes to serious debate; he suffers, has suffered for some time, from a shortage of courage when it comes to acknowledging the context of the times; he lacks the wherewithal to marshal his thoughts in a way that convincesvoters who may wish for a change of government but harbour misgivings about the changers.
Last Monday he failed precisely where he should not have lapsed: with all those who expect an alternative Prime Minister to back hisaspirations with the ability to persuade political agnostics that a change to Labour will be one for the better. His reply to the Budget speech disappointed where it most needed to succeed.
A few points he made bear scrutiny, for starters the grandiloquent 10-point programme Joseph Muscat announced a Labour government, assuming one is elected, would follow. Some points were artless enough to require highlighting; others are already being implemented successfully by the government. And, worth mentioning, he entered the Guinness Book of World Records for being the last man on earth to recognise that an economic tsunami has been playing havoc out there for the past two years.
But back to the basics of his programme. To get the country moving in what he called a different direction, there would be a need for sacrifices to be made (oh, dear!). In case workers, pensioners, students (students?) and middle class earners took a sharp intake of breath,Muscat swiftly made it clear that these sacrifices would have to be shouldered first and foremost by the wealthiest.
This must mean at least the introduction of a higher tax rate for the latter, but he made no mention of the threshold of income above which earners would be considered to rank among the wealthiest – €25,000? €30,000? €40,000? – nor the rate at which they would be clobbered – 40 per cent? 50pc? 60pc? But note: the loaded species will be first and foremost in any sacrificial offering, which suggests that others, less well-heeled like the new middle class he wants to see expanded (see below) will be called upon to some form of slaughter. When they are, he will remind these he had warned them all along.
He promised to make radical policy changes on how economic growth would be achieved, only to say that priority would be given to increasing wealth (that’s radical?) and public revenue (this from the man who declared that people were being taxed dry. Or has he other magical revenue raisers in mind?).
Perhaps even more fanciful and implausible was the man’s promise that €98 out of €100 accrued from tourism would remain in the local economy. The lost two euros stirred up strong emotions, a sense of loss – where will these lonely, orphaned coins end up? More seriously, how will €98 be thus retained?
Another point, somewhat enigmatic, stresses the exertions a Labour government will make to establish a new middle class. This must worry the old middle class. Where, like those coins, will it end up? Let me throw him a lifeline. He may be thinking of the expansion of the middle class, a proliferation that is already taking place and will continue as the economy progresses and the education system lifts a generation of skilled and professional young men and women to a new social status. And anyway, whatever happened to the working class?
As for Budget 2010, there was little he had to say for it, lots to criticise, much of it unfairly, and not a word on the success achieved in job creation during an international recession, ditto wealth creation.
This achievement was acknowledged by moronic lightweights like Bloomberg, Standard and Poor, Fitch and other nonentities. Nor did he seem to be impressed with a survey carried out by Ernst and Young of 100 foreign companies operating in Malta – 76 per cent had increased their operations and 81 per cent gave the thumbs up to government policies they agreed had enhanced the private sector.
I assume he gets help from his inner circle to fashion out his speech. He should consider sacking the lot, for quite apart from his 10-point programme, which included policies that are already being carried out by Dr Gonzi’s administration (so no change there) what on earth compelled him to bring Cyprus into the debate? The Prime Minister carried out a substantial demolition job here, as well he should have done.
Holding up Cyprus as a country behind which Malta lagged was not just unfortunate. It was rash and in a host of areas not borne out by The Euro Monitor 2010 – Indicators for Balanced Growth, a publication issued by the Lisbon Council. There on page nine we find that, “Primarily as a result of the economic downturn in 2008/2009, all the eurozone countries – except Germany and Malta have seen their overall measure of balanced growth decline since 2005” (my emphasis). Perhaps the Leader of theOpposition missed even that bad bit of news.
In the Fiscal Sustainability Stakes 2010, Malta lies in ninth position (up from 12th in 2005), Cyprus in 11th (the same place it occupied in 2005); in Competitive and Domestic Demand Ranking, Malta and Cyprus both score low, but Malta has improved its position from 16th in 2005 to 12th in 2009; and its rating improved from 3.8 to 4.5 over the same period.Cyprus’s ranking over the same period rose one point but her rating fell from 6.5 in 2005 to 4 in 2009).In Jobs, Productivity and Resource Efficiency, Malta ranks fifth in 2010 (up from 14th in 2005), above Slovenia, Cyprus, Belgium, Italy, Finland, France, Greece, Slovakia, Portugal and Spain. And so on.
Not bad going, Joseph; more significantly and on the whole, Malta improved its performance in most of the indicators every year sincewe joined the EU and, tsunami-unwilling, will continue to do so in 2011. Go on; smile.
Et tu, Illinois!
While US President Barack Obama accepted responsibility for the Democratic party’s failure in last Tuesday’s mid-term elections (even Illinois turned against him) he showed little sign at his press conference of understanding the reason for what he graphically described as a “shellacking”.
His tone, however subdued, was that apart from a “tweak” here a “tweak” there, it was business at usual. He did concede that he would work towards compromise with his Republican masters in the House of Representatives.
Both sides have nodded in the direction of compromise but nobody can be in any doubt that any such will be cosmetic. As Lady Macbeth chided her husband when he showed signs of remorse, they were in it “too deep”; Obama’s tweak will come up against what amounts to a congressional call for a virtual repeal of the healthcare bill as hammered through by the now speechless ex-Speaker, Nancy Pelosi.
Unlike her leader, the latter declared that she had “no regrets”, a contemptuous attitude for her to take in the wake of the “shellacking” her leader acknowledged the administration had just received. But Pelosi is like that.
The first woman Speaker of the House told one interviewer she would talk things over with her caucus, “have a conversation with my family, and pray over it”. Like she does over being pro-abortion?
She could have been a greater woman in office had she not concluded that it was incumbent on her to demonstrate a dogged refusal to cave in when doing so on certain issues and procedures could have produced better results for the President and the country. Now she, who never sought to discover what “common ground” there was between her party and the Republicans, is calling for both sides to find it.
It was the way she conducted business in Congress, Harry Reid’s in the Senate and Obama’s near refusal to contaminate the White House by being too tangibly in touch with Capitol Hill – unlike Mr Clinton in the 90s and Ronald Reagan in the 80s, both consummate wordsmiths, both consummate politicians who realised that the approval ofCongress was fundamental to their ultimate political objectives – that contributed so much to last Tuesday’s “shellacking”; that plus a massive over-spending spree. Last week a further $600 billion of Treasury Bonds were purchased by the Federal Reserve.
A President faced by a hostile House of Representatives is nothing new, but apart from that and a Senate with a hairline majority for the Democrats and some of these in sympathy with a Republican, Obama is also aware that his opponents control both Houses of the state legislature in 25 states. This means that even at subsidiary levels a number of the President’s men have fallen to his opponents.
Many are predicting gridlock. The Republicans will be, or should be, doing everything to prevent this for there is the clear danger that if they are seen to be obstructionist, which is how Obama will paint them if he fails to get his way with them, the American voter will punish them in two years’ time. Their primary task is, I imagine, to introduce fiscal responsibility, get the economy to pick up and unemployment to come down. Easy, no?
Yesterday Obama went to India with, it was reported, an entourage of 3,000 officials, businessmen and security personnel that will cost the battered coffers an estimated $200 million a day.
This scale of expenditure has been denied, but a Democrat strategist was quoted as saying that, “the optics of this are not good, right now”.