No guts, no glory!

E DII TO RII A L

This “pro business” administration has disappointed us on too many occasions, not because of ill-designed policies, but mainly for dragging its feet on critical issues and cowering to union bullies or even those at the helm of the brainless political parties.

The pointless debate about taxing the retirement bonus to public servants has already been monopolised by the government workers moaning their democratic rights have been abused. They declared an all-out strike for Friday and, as expected, the government chickened out with the Cabinet now saying that the whole issue could be discussed.

But, why negotiate? Surely, the crisis that this presidency inherited from its incompetent predecessors should be regarded as a force majeure and the conditions demand that radical measures be taken for as long as necessary. A harmless trimming of the public payroll hardly put a dent in the national payments, so how will civil servants not showing up for work change anything?

Hearing the public doctors’ union chief saying that a 24-hour strike was “more effective” than a 3hour warning was probably the most stupid thing ever aired on national radio in the past few days. Does this mean that if you have a heart attack during a strike or break 48 bones in a car crash, then the damage to your health will be softer?

But then again, why does the government feel the need to negotiate with civil servants? After all, the specific taxation is on a bonus fully dished out by the employer (the government) with absolutely no contributions from the civil servants. The President and the Finance Minister should have called the unions’ bluff and on Friday they would have sat back to enjoy the criticism of the strikers from the general public, a.k.a. the taxpayers.

Worse still, when the crisis first broke and talk of lowering the civil servants’ payroll got the trade unions up in arms, the civil servants’ trade union PASYDY bosses threatened that they would “name and shame” all those dodging taxes, with nothing eventually coming out.

The day that this government chooses to be more decisive on any and all issues of vast importance to all of us, then that will be the day that they will regain our trust, and probably our vote… But don’t push your luck!