Last week the Prime Minister called for an increased element of discipline in the country. Increased discipline could mean less litter being thrown in the street; more respect for the highway code by both pedestrians and drivers; more environment-friendly behaviour; less tax evasion; improved productivity within the public sector; and other aspects.
Discipline is probably one of those words that mean different things to different people and it is wished upon others but not upon oneself. Some would consider it to be a social or a political issue. In effect it is an economic issue, as the lack of discipline in the country harms economic activity.
That this is so is so very easy to prove. For example, lack of discipline in the form of tax evasion leads to not enough government revenue being collected. If not enough revenue is collected by the government there could be two consequences: Either the government imposes further taxes or some public services would have to be curtailed.
Either of the two consequences would eventually lead to a deterioration in the country's economic performance. The problem is that tax evaders do not appreciate enough this chain of events and then complain that the public sector is not delivering or that there are too many taxes.
This lack of appreciation of the consequence of a lack of discipline in the country is best exemplified by something that happened last week. I was passing by St Anne Street, Floriana, and I noticed a mobile toilet on the pavement. Its location was most unfortunate. It meant that pedestrians would have to step down from the pavement into the street to keep on going.
The door of the mobile toilet faced onto St Anne Street; so anyone who needed to use it, would have had to do so in full view of drivers. Can anyone imagine if, in the meantime, some dignitary would have passed and seen that toilet in what is probably Malta's busiest thoroughfare? And what would the tourists have thought? Surely no nice words would have come to their minds. Yet it happened!
One can also mention the time when someone dumped a whole bedroom suite on a centre strip near Spencer Hill in Marsa. After that was cleared up by staff of the public cleansing department, the same culprit or someone else dumped a mattress in the same place.
The site at our main sandy beaches on a Sunday morning after the ravages of the Saturday evening barbeques further accentuate the point. What all this leads to is the onset of a line of thinking by many that, if anyone can do it, so can they.
Apply the same line of thinking to our country's economic activities and one can imagine what the end result would be. In effect, I should not be writing in the conditional tense as the same line of thinking is being applied to our economic activities. The way public sector expenditure has developed without much control, the way private firms deal with their customers, the way some individuals occupy public land to pursue their economic activities, the lack of compliance with fiscal, employment and other legislation are all examples of how there is little discipline in the economy.
As a result, companies that seek to operate within the realms of the law, be fair with their consumers and seek to make a reasonable return on their investment (and these may be both large and small, Maltese-owned and foreign-owned, producing for the local market or for the export market) are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit staff that can work within a disciplined environment, to get the appropriate support from the public sector and to keep their business going without unnecessary hassle.
Again one needs to look at the logical consequence of all this, keeping in mind that today investment is free to move across national borders without too many problems; worse still there are several countries that wish to have some of the investors that we have in our country and are doing all they could to take them away from us. Investment would just walk away, like it is walking away from countries seen to be too bureaucratic, corrupt and undisciplined.
Several of the examples that are given to illustrate the lack of discipline in the country may be seen to be little details. It is an incorrect approach. These examples are symptomatic of a much widespread problem.
Today this country no longer faces issues of large scale importance such as whether the private sector will be allowed to operate or will there be a government that is only too eager to be the main operator in the economy, or such as whether our economy will form part of a large economic bloc called the European Union or do we seek to survive on our own. These issues that have taken up much of our attention over the last 20 years are thankfully behind us.
We now need to concentrate on making this country really attractive for investors to come and create economic activity. The economy needs discipline in the country in general if this is to happen.