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The result of this week’s GWU elections comes hardly as a surprise. We welcomed the contestation and hoped it would bring about a clash of ideas rather than a personality slinging match. Regrettably it was not to be. The level of debate left much to be desired. The fallout even less. The entrenched ruling group has consolidated its position while the challengers have been routed.
As happens in all Maltese institutions the winner takes all and the losers are marginalised. The election attracted much media attention and spin. The contest was portrayed as a battle between a militant and non-militant faction. The respective contestants for the top job spoke to each other in the columns of the institutions newspaper. The contest took a nasty turning when the more media savvy Emanuel Micallef was accused of being the choice of the Nationalist party. Another loss is Josephine Attard-Sultana.
Micallef’s fate was of course sealed when the Nationalist party secretary-general publicly favoured his election. This was a public endorsement with the strategic and specific intention of ensuring that as a result Tony Zarb wins. This strategy placed narrow party interests before the national interest.
A shrewder politician would have looked at the bigger picture and realised only too well that with the old guard at the helm little will change and much will get worse: an aggravation which the country at this moment in time can barely afford.
Tony Zarb has a reputation. We can only expect a hardened union attitude, a lessening of any chances to achieve a social pact. The union desperately needs to reassess its position.
It needs a root and branch change which was indeed the battle cry of the failed candidate. This has become all the more urgent in the highly competitive globalised world we live and trade in. The union remains far too inward looking. Many a foreign union have soul searched and reassessed their role. First and foremost the union must distance itself even further from its traditional alliance with the Labour party. This privileged relationship does little good to the long-term interests of the union’s members. It serves even less the national interest which dictates that all the social partners not only take stock of the dire economic situation but starts implementing the necessary medicine which will help us out of our difficulties. The role of the union in this strategy is crucial.
There can be little done if the union persists in refusing to grant its support to the many hard decisions which need to be taken no reforms will take place. Now that Tony Zarb has won a landslide victory, it is time for him to be magnanimous not only with his challenger who still has much to offer but most especially with the countless number of persons still awaiting a sign from the union of its willingness to lend its support to overcome the economic difficulties the country is facing. Concretely this means trying yet again to get all the social partners to agree to a social pact which remains the lifeline to economic recovery.
Once achieved, a surprisingly number of reforms can take place many of which are in the long-term interest of members of the union. We will be kidding ourselves if we imagine that our standard of living can be taken for granted.
This is indeed what is at stake. The reforms are necessary and without them our standard of living is under attack. The union should use this moment to win further credibility especially with the section of society which has always been extremely sceptical of its actions. Now is the time to bite the economic bullet and lead the country towards the necessary reforms. This is the time for leadership to be shown.
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