Tonio Fenech, long-serving finance man and now shadow minister, is a man with considerable cheek. He displayed that year after year in his official position, first as parliamentary secretary then as minister. Year after year his estimates of revenue and expenditure proved to be substantially off course. He never referred to that in the subsequent Budget speech.

He is now keeping tabs on the Government’s financial and economic situation, and doing so as critically as he can. So he should, too. That is his job and responsibility. Nevertheless he has to fulfil his function while retaining at least a modicum of credibility. The way he’s doing it seems he sees more marines in front of him than voters who barely six months ago turfed him and his colleagues out with nothing but contempt.

The shadow minister has chosen two hot issues as his current main line of attack. One is the level of the unemployed as reflected in the records of the Employment and Training Corporation (ETC). The other is the budgetary deficit. Regarding employment, Mr Fenech is pointing out that it is on a rising trend. That it is so is a worrying fact. What the former minister ignores, however, is that the trend appeared and persisted under his watch. For most of 2012 registered unemployment rose and rose, both month-to-month and also year-on-year.

When his attention was drawn to it, he never recognised or admitted with due humility that there was a problem. He just ignored the criticism and refused to offer any explanation based on genuine critical analysis of the situation.

That is not to say it is any less worrying that the trend has persisted during the first half year of the Labour Government. But in democratic terms facts should be respected as facts. It is a fact that market segmentation evident in the Maltese economy is throwing up a mismatch between new jobs and available skills on the market.

The growing sectors of the economy, mostly in the IT and financial sectors, are meeting their requirements as they arise, which is a great plus factor. The available pool of skilled and lower-skilled workers, in contrast, are not finding the openings they require. In part this is due to the demand side of the economy. Industrial activity has fallen off in various areas.

Yet it has grown in others, suggesting that there is also a problem on the supply side of the labour market.

The Education Minister, who is also responsible for the ETC, is laying considerable stress in his public statements on the need to revive vocational education. That is a must. It is not enough to say that the Mcast offers myriad courses. That is good and they are welcome. But a structured vocational education policy that anticipates industrial needs is lacking.

The value of such a policy is best seen in Germany, where education is the backbone of the progress made by key German companies. This is an area which needs to be addressed. The forthcoming Budget speech might throw some light on the Government’s plans in its regards.

The other area emphasised by shadow minister Tonio Fenech is the public debt relative to the GDP, and lately Fitch’s downgrade of Malta’s credit rating arising from it.

The Opposition does not suffer from amnesia. Yet it conveniently forgets that the public deficit and public debt had been steadily rising through the years they were in government.

Mr Fenech tried to pin Fitch’s downgrade to the marginal increase in 2013 outgoings in the form of the higher cost of government. I believe he had worked that out at some €6 million, which is hardly significant relative to the size of his own forecast deficit.

This sort of approach may be valid for politicians who think that people forget, or do not interest themselves too much in the nitty-gritty of financial affairs. They are wrong to reach that conclusion, as voters showed on March 9. The public deficit overshadowed the Nationalist Party’s propaganda and spin while in government.

It is ironic that it is now being counterpointed by the fact that the Nationalist Party also made a sad mess of its own finances.

A forward-looking Opposition, which has yet to shake off the dust of almost 25 years in government, does not meet the objectives set out by its own leader in his independence speech. Not only does it not admit its faults and shortcomings but it twists them round and about with statements based on clearly false data and worse interpretation of them.

Retaining Tonio Fenech as shadow minister of finance was perhaps inevitable. It was not necessarily correct given that every time he throws something at the Labour Government it turns out to be a cruel boomerang.

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