It’s been 30 months since Joseph Muscat’s Tagħna Lkoll movement won the election in a landslide victory. A victory that we have never seen before in Malta, not even when Malta was on the brink of a civil war back in the late 80’s. Not even when Alfred Sant declared war against Dom Mintoff in 1998 did we see such a margin of votes.
After Muscat’s resounding victory we expected quick changes. Changes in the way the country is administered and changes in the way people are chosen in top positions. Muscat’s rallying cries that “Tista ma taqbilx magħna, izda tista taħdem magħna” and “Ma jgħoddx lil min taf, izda jgħodd lil min taf” both created a surreal wave of high expectations from the newly formed government.
In all honesty, even after I vociferously campaigned in the 2013 election in order to be elected as a Local Councillor on behalf of the PN, even I was eagerly awaiting for Joseph Muscat to put his roadmap into action. I started to believe that politics was actually going to take on a new dimension, that the landscapes has now moved and that Muscat is going to raise the bar. A bar which I, for the love of my country, desperately wanted to see raised in order to reach European Union level.
The first few appointments that Muscat made were the obvious ones, he surrounded himself with his close friends and ensured that his inner circle was all in place and ready to run the country. That was always expected as in order to run a country the Prime Minister needs his closest allies in his office.
The disappointment started as weeks started to roll by. All of a sudden we started to see many people appointed to various roles just because they are Muscat’s sympathisers. We saw the appointment of Cyrus Engerer, a convicted criminal, to a role in Brussels that makes him Muscat’s personal representative in Brussels. If that wasn’t enough, his partner was also given a role in the same office. How is that right I ask?
Months continued to pass by and we started seeing that accountability was merely a buzz word that Joseph Muscat used before the election and nothing else. Ministers started doing one grave mistake after another. The so called best cabinet of all time had to be revamped, first after ministers started to resign and than after Manuel Mallia’s henchman went wild west style. Months continued to pass by and people’s patience started to diminish. All of a sudden Muscat wasn’t in his honeymoon period any longer. Muscat now started to run the country and not just settling in his cushy office.
Fast forward to October 2015 and we find ourselves in this current situation. When one takes stock of what’s going good in the country it seem that there is one common factor. A booming economy. However I ask, is this because of Muscat’s good management or is it a result of various actions that happened abroad that isn’t in the control of the Maltese government? Is our economy doing so well because we are living in times when the oil prices is at an all time low? All in all, whatever it is, it seems that all the good things that are happening in this country are being driven from the good economic state we currently have.
This is definitely helping Muscat to stretch his arms and do ambitious projects, however this begs the question. What projects? We are more than two and a half years in the legislature and so far Muscat and his comrades are still opening one project after another that was commenced under the previous PN government. With such an excellent economic state that the country finds itself in, isn’t it high time that Labour embarks on some ambitious projects?
These ambitious projects should target the government’s achilles heel directly. Traffic! For many years we have been saying that Malta needs infrastructural development in order to solve our traffic issues. Although we have shy of 400,000 people living in Malta, the truth is that at any one point in time there’s close to 700,000 people in the country. With that in mind we need to cater for that amount of people and not to the 400,000 we used to talk about in the past.
In order to combat traffic we need concrete plans and not frivolous ideas that someone can come up with in an open brainstorming session. We need plans that will prove that traffic will go down factually and not based on a hunch. However if we are to see these concrete ideas in action than we need to stop hiring people just to please them. We need to stop hiring iced buns and we need to see technocratic people in key roles.
This brings us to the other issue on which this government is failing miserably. Employing people just because they are Labourites doesn’t deliver results. All it does is upset those that rightfully deserved the role and causes insurmountable deficiencies in the day to day management of the department. We can’t expect to have the best result if we don’t higher the best people.
We can’t expect to solve the traffic problem if the minister in charge isn’t the best candidate for the role. By employing puppets, yes men and people in return for favours; one will get a mediocre outcome which will ultimately disappoint and let down the electorate.
This all boils down to one question. Is the people happy with the change that they were given following Muscat’s promises in 2013? Is this the change that the country voted for? I have my opinion on this however something tells me that as time goes by many people that trusted Muscat’s rallying calls are sharing my opinion too!
