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This is not my sermon on the mount addressed to a one-man audience called Michael Falzon, former Nationalist Minister, who on 17 July 2005 on Radio 101 referred to Labourites as pigs: “Labourites are like that animal that if you cut its tail, will remain the same.”
So I am not even going to dare to quote Jesus Christ saying: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your friends, hate your enemies’. But now I tell you: love your enemies.” Even though a politician who militates in a Christian Democratic party that boasts so much of its Christian roots and values should not be at all allergic to the words of Christ!
As I am a sinner myself, I will not cast stones at Mr Falzon. I have had my own shameful moments when I have lashed out at Nationalist party politicians (not all Nationalists). So, no self-righteous words from me, I hope.
I will also resist quoting George Orwell’s Animal Farm‚ where humans and pigs look at each other and it becomes impossible to distinguish the one from the other. After all, perception is in the eye of the beholder.
But I cannot help remembering my childhood in the sixties when Labour Party supporters were treated as pariahs. In my village, Mellieha, ‘Dom’s Bar’, where the most daring local Labourites met, was referred to as “il-maqjel” (the pigsty). Here we are, 40 years later, with a prominent Nationalist politician still referring to Labourites as pigs.
Forty years ago Church pulpits and political rallies were unashamedly used to proclaim that God was with the Nationalists, against the Labourites. It did not stop at this Good versus Evil rhetoric. Labourites were denied sacraments. They were refused burial in consecrated grounds. Labour activists were threatened with hell for reading Labour newspapers and for voting Labour. Church bells were rung to drown the speeches of the Labour leaders. After Labour mass meetings housewives were mobilised to disinfect the squares where they were held.
The Nationalist party, with God on its side, condoned this repressive process of dehumanising Labourites, and used this undemocratic politics to win two general elections in the sixties. While Pope John XXIII was opening up the Catholic Church and refreshing it with a new spring, the Nationalist Party in Malta and Gozo was using the local church, fighting desperately to hold on to its medieval privileges and mindset. So its was not very promising early last year to hear Dr Lawrence Gonzi closing his first speech as the successor of Dr Eddie Fenech Adami as leader the Nationalist party with the words “God is with us!” So according to Dr Gonzi, God is a card-carrying member of the Nationalist party and according to Mr Falzon the Labourites are pigs.
In The Life of Reason, George Santayana warns us: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” We simply cannot afford to waste our time recreating the past, or prolonging its strangling hold over us. Perhaps because we are afraid of the tough challenges of the present and the future we take the deceptively easy road to attacking each other rather than addressing successfully the bread and butter issues of making this country competitive again, creating wealth and jobs, lowering taxes to give families and businesses a new lease of life and introducing good governance to stamp out corruption and ensuring that taxes are used to provide good public services in health, education, welfare and environmental protection. There is still a lot to be done to create a national community where we all feel equal because we are treated with equity and where all the national institutions are truly national and not politically tribal and dominated by partisan networks.
Using dehumanising rhetoric against each other makes it more difficult to heal the deep wounds that we have inflicted on each other over the years.
The challenges today require a new strategy and a closer working relationship between the country’s political, productive and social forces. The local political culture of permanent confrontation at all costs will have to continue changing if we are to face successfully the new challenges of the first decade of the 21st century and beyond.
Losing more than the lira
What are the advantages of replacing the Maltese Lira with the Euro? The financial expert I am talking to lists four advantages: “Exchange rate stability, no need of foreign reserves to back up and defend the Maltese Lira, the removal of interest rate risk premium and price transparency.” I must admit I feel bewildered by this jargon and try to make him use words to help me understand what he is saying.
He tells me that adopting the Euro, Malta will have one of the three major currencies in the world. “Malta will participate in the financial and exchange rate stability that the Euro area will offer.” He explains that the Central Bank “will no longer need to keep sufficient amounts of reserves specifically to back up and defend the Maltese Lira. The probability of a balance of payments crisis and run on the reserves of the Central Bank will be completely removed. The Central Bank will not be forced to devalue if reserves are sufficiently depleted.” He also thinks that with the Euro “government treasury bills would be able to be issued at lower interest rates, inducing savings on public debt financing.”
He also expects more price transparency, without any more exchange rate fluctuations. But he adds a word of caution: “Different regions in the Euro area have different incomes and standard of living and hence would also have different prices one cannot expect that prices of tradable goods in Malta would always be the lowest possible in the Euro area.”
He mentions eight disadvantages that Malta will face with the adoption of the Euro. I ask him to focus on the main ones. He says, “The introduction of the Euro per se will not hasten faster economic growth and improve higher per capita income. The main current problem with the Maltese economy is the lack of growth in exports of goods and services. The adoption of the Euro will mean that the government will lose an important macroeconomic tool – the exchange rate – and hence will be unable to directly influence the foreign price of our exports to induce faster economic growth.”
He tells me that “exports in Euro will gain (in terms of exchange rate fluctuations) at the expense of exports in Sterling and US Dollar.” He explains that the loss of the exchange rate tool will mean that “If domestic prices rise faster than in our competitor countries, the government will be unable to adjust the exchange rate to regain international competitiveness.”
According to him this has serious implications for most of the population: “With the loss of the exchange rate as a macro-economic stabilising tool, full adjustment will fall on the labour market. When the prices of our exports rise too much (for the given quality of the goods and services that we produce), exports will start to decline causing the labour market to accept lower wages and/or higher unemployment. The labour market will have to absorb the full adjustment of any decline in competitiveness.”
evaristbartolo@hotmail.com
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