Whom to believe?
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If I understand correctly how such inquiries operate, they lack executive tools that are powerful enough to investigate the cases placed before them
Morally, the most difficult moments in political life do not come when you have to respond to the question – whom to back?
Alfred Sant is a Labour MEP
Such a question just requires a reply which (if it is going to be appropriate) must centre not on who you like or abhor, neither on who happens to be your best friend or not: but on a judgement, yours, about who has the best potential to carry out his/her responsibilities with vigour, integrity and ability.
In the end, a reply must clearly reflect a respondent’s deep feelings, which also implies that different people will have different replies to the question.
Much greater difficulties arise when one seeks a reply to another question: when faced with different, sometimes conflicting, versions of the reality, who is to be believed?
What will make you believe in one version and not another? Is it the loyalty and openness of whoever you would like to trust? The problem is so complicated and tough because not everybody attaches the same meaning and value to the words “loyalty” and “openness”.
European Parliament resolution
I think this is close to the fourth time that I’m writing about the resolution on Malta and the rule of law approved last week by the European Parliament. I do so in order to again emphasize how inherently flawed is the process by which the Parliament arrives at judgements about events in EU member states.
The partisanship and manoeuvering that goes into decisions is so evident. What is also just as evident is the calculation that is being made all the time – excuse or ignore whatever your allies do; condemn what those you disagree with happen to be doing.
The levels of hypocrisy in the whole situation reached an exceptional high in Malta’s case. True, there are a number of matters which open us up to big time criticism. However it was astonishing to note how no effort was spared to uncritically drag into the EP resolution all allegations and puerile attacks that in past months have been levelled at the Malta government.
Conflicts of interest
Beyond today’s ongoing controversies, we need to discuss further how to better restrict conflicts of interest in Malta. Even so, there cannot be easy solutions. Bigger countries than ours have failed to get the problem under control.
When a country is as small as ours then, difficulties multiply. They override considerations as to whether a person who has been placed in a given role has come too close to any special interests.
In such small societies as Malta’s, everybody knows everybody else, everybody is everybody else’s relative, everybody at some one time or another, has expected to receive a favour from somebody else. In this wide network of interests in which all sorts of claims get entangled, how is it possible to distinguish what is acceptable and what is not?
Magisterial inquiries
The manner by which magisterial inquiries have become “fashionable” seems to me to be the most powerful indicator regarding how governance of the country has been weakened. I am less than convinced that magisterial inquiries can be sufficiently effective to determine the “whole “truth or to do so
“in time”.
If I understand correctly how such inquiries operate, they lack executive tools that are powerful enough to investigate the cases placed before them. It is true that inquiries have the power to give orders to the witnesses they summon and that they can use public funds to appoint experts and other persons to investigate aspects of issues which they would wish to focus on.
But apart from the long time that inquiries take (and not just in Malta), without human resources that respond directly to who is in charge of the investigation – resources which have accumulated their own knowhow inhouse, and which can be assigned fulltime to a case – rare will be the occasions when inquiries will be able to dig deep enough.
Actually, the work they are being asked to carry out, should have been – or should be – done by the police.
Pay increases
The latest data about the nominal wage that workers and employees receive (covering the third quarter of this year) shows that in the eurozone, this income has grown on average by 2.6 percent. In Malta the increase stood at 2.7 per cent.
During the previous six months, quarter by quarter, Maltese
wage income dropped by 0.1 per cent in the first quarter, and had only risen to 0.9 percent in the second quarter, at a time when the eurozone average showed increases of close to 2.8 percent.
So, even when the results of the third quarter (to September) are taken into account, the rise in the wage income for Malta was this year well below that of the eurozone as a whole. Now, things should have gone the opposite way since Malta’s economic growth rate was well above that of many euro countries. What had happened?
The strongest explanation I can think of is that given the immigrants that have been arriving, especially from Europe, the demand for labour is being cleared without any need to scale up wage levels.
Drop in sales
Naturally, entrepreneurs and commercial firms must express concern when they see... as happened in recent weeks... that their sales are taking a hit.
At times of political uncertainty, people will buy less, as they wait for events to stabilise. If moreover, protests and public demonstrations are being held, purchases will be further curtailed.
These two factors, which can separately trigger different outcomes are active among us. When and if demonstrations stop, shopowners will get relief as buying and selling will resume. As soon as the political situation clarifies, which is what one assumes will happen, such relief will become widespread.
In France at the moment, where the government’s proposals for pension reforms have generated huge popular discontent, a similar situation to ours has developed. I would say that the French crisis is surely as serious in scope as ours.
Happy Christmas to the staff and readers The Malta Independent, as well as their families.