A visionless budget

There are several ways of looking at the annual budget presented by the government. Many people just look at it with a ‘what’s in it for me’ attitude. Others consider its impact on the economic health of the country and whether the budget will make the country’s economy more robust or otherwise.

But the budget is also a political statement exposing the immediate aims of the government as part of its long term vision of the country.

This is where the budget speech delivered last Monday completely fails.

When a political party regains power after years in opposition, the tendency is for the first budget to be the basis of a vision that the new powers that be, promise to pursue.

Last Monday, we had no such thing.  We had a government trying to tidy up the unfinished ends of the visions of the past, including the complete abandonment of some of these visions. It was a budget presented by an exhausted government that does not know what its next step should be.

This is not something new or peculiar to Malta. It happens everywhere in democratic countries where power rotates between political parties and the situation peaks to the expectancy of a fresh government.

In this aspect, the budget was down to earth. Gone are such visions as the tunnel to Gozo; the roofing over of the main street in Floriana and of the road leading to the Santa Venera tunnels; the introduction of a metro service - all nice visions that are obviously not financially sustainable and that have been abandoned by the government without anything resembling a whimper.

No new infrastructural projects have been announced. Perhaps, it is better than promising projects of grandeur only to end up never carrying them out. The controversial Msida flyover has been on the books for a long time and this is the only substantial infrastructural project covered by the proposed expenditure in the budget.

The issue of the ever increasing government debt is considered not serious as Malta’s debt remains acceptable when compared with the ever increasing GDP. So the budget ignores it.

A slight tweak in the pension system whereby future pensioners have to work another year to reach pensionable age was introduced by stealth with the government pretending that it is not what it says!

The issue of the energy prices whereby the government is heavily subsidising the consumption of electricity across the board remains a problem. The EU does not like it but the Abela administration has no idea how to start weaning the country away from the system that it had introduced. Abela just keeps on postponing the decision to find a way out, and, frankly, he does not seem to know how to tackle it. Surely this cannot go on for ever!

In other words, the message is that government wants to tie up as many ends as possible. This, in itself, is a positive thing but the lack of a real new vision is not. The government’s ideas for the future are stale - at least as far as the message imparted by the budget of the current administration is concerned.

Compare the current state of affairs with the euphoria of Joseph Muscat being elected to power replacing a tired and exhausted PN administration. The wheels have turned full circle and the budget shows why the country is yearning for a new begining.

After three electoral losses, one expects the party in Opposition to be ready to take over, but this is far from the current situation. The internal shenennigans within the PN might be over, but their effect still lingers on. Were it not for that grim period during which the PN was fighting against itself, this budget would have signalled the beginning of the end of Robert Abela’s administration, but the situation is what it is: the PN leader trails Robert Abela in the popularity stakes.

These circumstances give an undeserved edge to Robert Abela’s administration. The argument therefore becomes: Can Robert Abela win the next election in spite of the obvious lack of vision of the last budget presented to the Maltese electorate?

Corruption squared

There are unlimited ways how people can get what they want via corruption. The recent attempt in Gozo takes the prize for the most original case of corruption multiplying itself - a case of corruption squared.

In a case that ended up in Court with two persons being accused of corruption, a Gozitan footballer is alleged to have offered an opposing team's goalkeeper a government job if he helped Qala Saints win the Gozo football league.

Qala Saints FC player Manuel Xerri and Żebbuġ Rovers goalkeeper Leonard Camilleri appeared before a Magistrate's Court in Gozo charged with sports corruption. It followed an investigation into a GFA Division One match between Nadur Youngsters and Qala Saints at the Gozo Stadium in March. The game ended in a 1-1 draw.

The two footballers are accused of attempting to bribe Nadur's goalkeeper Steve Sultana to let Qala Saints win the title. It seems Qala Saints are no saints!

Sultana was allegedly contacted by Camilleri who allegedly passed on a message from Qala Saints FC who were offering Sultana a government job if he handed them the league.

Sultana informed his club president, lawyer Chris Said, about the attempted match-fixing offer. Said, in turn, alerted the MFA integrity officer. The case was reported to the police and the criminal investigations led to the two charges in Court. Both players were suspended amid parallel disciplinary proceedings against Qala Saints FC.

Whether the police investigated how these footballers have the power to ‘donate’ jobs with the Government is a moot point. Nothing was said about this aspect of the case, which I consider more serious than the charges made in Court. This is not sports corruption but corruption of another sort!

Did the police not realise that the promised reward is, in itself, also a case of corruption at a different level - a political level?

This indeed must be a first, although oldtimers might recall that in the Mintoff years, a Gozitan Labour MP had organised a lottery with a job with Goverbnment being touted as the first prize!

This time around, a football player was allegedly offered a Government job as a reward for corruption. Not the usual brown envelope, but a government job!

This surely takes the cake in the annals of corruption in Malta and Gozo!