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Evenings in tuxedos are not my cup of tea, so what I write here is based on the notes of one of the reporters who on Friday night witnessed the opening of the new hotel at Ghajn Tuffieha.
Winston Zahra senior kicked off by telling his guests: “Welcome… I would like to say, to the golf course and resort…” to laughs of his black and white audience.
The off the cuff remark is as telling as the PM’s intention to proceed with the golf course at a site which, although once an ecological gem, today is a dumping ground for rubble, a jungle of trapping sites, and a haven for hormone-rich offroaders.
I would take my dogs for walks to Xaghra l-Hamra for years until I gave up on the hunters and the trappers and the general disregard for the area. Nevertheless, it is still a natural gem – I would very much prefer the Saghtar bushes to golf carts carrying a bunch of barmy English toffs.
It is not a golf course I am against, or the wish that Winston junior and senior make a quick buck out of golfers, or the end of the rubble tipping and offroading. No, not really.
It is actually the attempt to bypass all procedures and leave all the decision-making to a Prime Minister, that I am against.
This is not a monarchy, but a bloody boring democracy and in a democracy there are rules, checks and balances and decision-making processes. If this is the case, why should anyone be so shocked if the Labour party would want to dismantle MEPA?
The PN press are 101 per cent correct when they accuse Labour MP Roderick Galdes for being completely out of line when he talks about MEPA. How can Galdes, an employee at MEPA, pass judgement about his workplace?
And yet, we should similarly remind the Nationalist media boys who are quite correct in pointing out the wrongs, that the biggest wrong is the way Xaghra l-Hamra has been selected for the development of the golf course… you cannot have a Prime Minister who wakes up in the morning and points to a plateau, and says: “okay fellas… this is the frigging place for a golf course!”
Now the PM is definitely the centre of attraction this week. But come on, let us be positive. Being the PM is no piece of cake, as the good old fathers of the Commonwealth would say.
If you are PM you are expected to respect all the laws and rules. And I am sure, and I say this seriously and without any cynicism – it is difficult to live as a PM and a private citizen in a system where all the rules are broken.
Try be a PM and employ the services of a plumber, a painter who will give you a VAT receipt. Better still, try and purchase a property where the seller will declare the full amount.
Try and employ a maid that will work with a work permit. Try and eat out and not appear disturbed if a VAT receipt is not presented. Try and live as both a PM and a father and hope that nothing ‘incorrect’ is perpetrated by your family members, cousins, nephews and nieces. The list is endless.
A prime minister and his ministers suffer from these drawbacks. Against the ocean of perks they may appear as small things, but they are significant. Like the rest of us they also have lives and yet we tend to forget that they are one of the few people who are constrained to respect those little rules that most of us tend to ignore.
Now, after being unusually nice to the powers that be, I must be myself once again and turn to the oil crisis. There is no doubt that the problem of rising fuel prices is not Austin Gatt’s doing.
On that we are in full agreement. Yet, the methods used by Austin G to solve these fuel prices give away his insensitivity. Now he says he does not read newspapers, though he does believe in spinning to the press once in a while and placing huge adverts in newspapers.
He is also unrepentant for the mistakes of his predecessors who failed to act as they should have. We are unenthusiastic in dividing the history of the Nationalist party as the one before Austin and the one after. This is a seventeen-year old government and that is final.
Austin, as we all know is obsessed with balancing his budget. If he spends a fiver he wants his fiver plus a pound back. But in this fuel crisis, we are not dealing with PBS. People can live with a downgraded PBS, if they do not like Joe-who-calls-himself-Peppi on Fridays, they can always watch Toni Abela… and if he is equally as unbearable they can always zap to a good Italian film which is infinitely far more entertaining than local talk shows.
With fuel prices it is a different matter. Small and big business alike cannot take a holiday and return when Austin G decides to act reasonably. More importantly, they cannot see their fixed costs go up further. Middle-class families cannot pay heftier bills and elderly people are worried with their money. And the underclass, well… one better starts realising there is one.
Last week a call for a vacancy for a deliveryman resulted in 40 telephone calls, 32 of which were unemployed men aged between 23 to 50. The Prime Minister is gloating about a drop in the unemployed, but the reality is that the drop is related to those who abused the system and were asked to give the social security department a break and not to an increase in gainfully employed.
He also wallows over reaching targets in this budget on deficit control but this will be a one-time story if Minister Gatt gets his way and transfers all the rise in fuel prices onto the private sector and the public. Next year’s budget deficit target will be a calamity.
Needless to say Austin G faces a daunting task. Yesterday’s two-page advert paid by taxpayers’ money in all newspapers is a shameful piece of work. As a state minister, Austin Gatt is entitled to pages of advertising but he is not entitled to produce verbal diarrhoea.
He writes and I quote: “I would however be grateful if everybody remembers one thing – the invitation is open for anyone – Dr Sant in particular – to be appointed as Enemalta’s buyer provided he uses his own money and he assumes the risks and rewards… Any bets that Dr Sant will NOT come forward.”
If there is a time to bang one’s cranium on a corbelled wall, this is the moment. This could well have been an advert from Joe Saliba’s office. But Joe Saliba can do what he likes with his party money.
Dr Gonzi, though no great preacher on how state and party should be divided, is surely irked by Gatt’s Tarzan-politics.
With our money state ministers are expected to be above the partisan mudslinging and to offer some form of decorous approach. If they wish to scribble their unadulterated thoughts then they should tender their resignations and come and work as commentators with MaltaToday. Austin G would be a fine sight alongside Anna Mallia.
Dr Gatt can try very hard to apportion all the blame on the world situation and shift no culpability on the outdated energy policies and a mismanaged Enemalta. But he has to remember one simple thing: when the prices go up, and when the surcharge goes up and consumer spending drops, he should start praying.
Praying for a miracle… for after this blow the government would have lost so much respect that no two-page adverts or programmes on NET TV or Tonio Fenechs on Friday evening TV will convince them they are better off with a Jane governing than a Tarzan.
I have to share this one with all my readers. You will all know Oskar by now, my anarcho-canine kelb tal-fenek, a hyperactive dog who tends to greet human beings by jumping all over them. Well yesterday, the electrician (who does provide me with VAT receipts) inadvertently left the door wide open.
Oskar, earnestly hopeful he would meet Mr Sciberras (see letters page), rushed out of the house. As I realised what had happened, I had visions of explaining to the blonde that I had just lost the dog.
I rushed out calling his name like someone who loses his soul. Thankfully, the Naxxar refuse collection system is far from perfect so everyone dumps their garbage bags at the feet of the corner ficus tree. There he was sniffing away, and dutifully he froze as he heard his worried master. I promptly lunged for his collar, relieved I had avoided divorce proceedings.
Then a stern voice from under a helmet shouted out: “Mister, ghandek borza?” (Mister, do you have a bag?)
It was, believe it or not, ‘ the do not dump a turd prevention’ warden on a motor bike. I could not believe my ears. I looked on in disbelief. I said “what?” and my childhood numbskull character repeated the question again: “Mister ghandek borza?”
I tried to explain the sequence of events, but it was like talking to Austin Gatt. Talking at the wall. I gave up and walked away and I asked him to report me to the police at once. “Stop,” he shouted, and he raced behind me with his silly bike, registration number JET-026.
So I shouted my name and address and opened the door and returned Oskar to his barricaded home, singing to myself, “Oh, what a wonderful morning, oh what a wonderful day, I’ve got a beautiful feeling…”
sbalzan@mediatoday.com.mt
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