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In 1953, the East German regime announced that, as the result of the insurrection against it by the workers of East Berlin, the government had lost confidence in the people. Writer Bertold Brecht sarcastically remarked that the government had decided to dissolve the people and elect another. After thousands of citizens who usually vote PN abstained from voting in the March 11 local council elections, the PN leadership and party machine also declared that they have lost confidence in the many thousands who decided to break with their usual voting habit.
The PN has said that the people are ungrateful; they have such a good government that has delivered so much and people are now taking all these goodies for granted. Another PN line of argument was that the people are not even aware of what a good government they have and are not appreciating the huge leaps forward the country is making.
At least in public, only former Finance Minister John Dalli begs to differ. He hopes that the PN General Council meeting in Gozo today will discuss why the party has “been faring so badly at the ballot box in the past two years.” In his Sunday Times column (19th March 2006) he made it clear that there are various reasons why voters are getting disgruntled and disenchanted with the PN government. He believes that “there is a feeling of despondency in this country” and that “people deserve a better deal.”
I have no doubt that the former minister thinks that under his leadership both his party and the country would be in a much better situation that today. The majority in the general council of the PN decided otherwise when he contested the leadership post and lost to Lawrence Gonzi. Since then Dalli believes that the PN has been weakened considerably especially as all pro-Dalli activists have been purged and this has “shaken the efficiency of the party and rendered it ineffectual.”
It remains to be seen whether the PN general council today will meet Dalli’s expectations and carry out a soul-searching exercise why it has lost every election since Lawrence Gonzi became its leader. Nearly two years have passed since the PN received a report why it lost the 2004 election for the European Parliament. According to that report the main reason for the 2004 electoral defeat was the loss of credibility of the PN because “of the many promises of Government, of the Party and the Candidates, that were never delivered, and that should not have been promised in the first place as they could not be delivered.” The report criticizes the PN for ignoring what “the people wanted to talk about… other things that have a personal impact on them like the cost of living, unemployment, pensions and the environment.”
The report admits that the PN lost credibility, as before the 2003 general election “many promises of every kind were made, promises that were not delivered. Many of the PN activists who spoke to the Commission expressed their concern that ‘the Party in Government had lost its ‘soul’… even top party officials admitted to us that they feel that the PN has lost the ‘high moral ground’, which means that the party has cut itself off from the values it embraces.”
The Commission drawing up the report states: “The biggest problem the PN had in this election was the middle class – the biggest class in the country and that extensive parts of it carry most of the burden of taxation and so they expect the country to be administered better and the country’s scarce resources to be used much better. Many associate Ministries, government agencies, the civil service – Government in a few words – with the squandering of money, lack of discipline, lack of will. Most of all it was made clear to us that Government is not governing prudently and wisely, and showing its teeth with those who deserve it and that the country is run more by Government officials than by Government through its Ministers.”
When the general council of the PN meets today will it have the courage to discuss Dr Gonzi’s failure to renew the PN, to recover the party’s ‘soul’, to remove all the cronies referred to in the report and to give the people of Malta and Gozo a better life? Or will it take the easy road and dissolve the people?
Charles Martin
I meet Charles in many of the seminars and meetings held regularly on tourism. Whenever he stands up to speak, it is to stress the importance of developing our human resources to improve the quality of our services. Charles Martin MSc. FHCIMA is the executive administrator of HCIMA Malta, a fellow and international ambassador of HCIMA and managing partner of a MEJORIS Hospitality Consultancy Services. He is concerned that the level of skills in hotels and restaurants is rather on the lower end of the scale. “From a survey conducted some two years ago only 16% of management respondents had followed any type of tertiary education. On the operatives side the situation is not that much better for although the ITS trains a number of new employees every year, this number is not large enough for the needs of the industry. A large number of students are employed on part-time or seasonal basis and most of these are not even given any basic training or induction training before facing clients.”
Charles believes that a change of mentality is needed at the very top. “Unfortunately, the industry is full of people who open properties without having the basic skills themselves and then employ people who are placed in the front line without being given any basic training. Unless we manage to convince owners that training is a necessary part of the business strategy then all efforts will be wasted. We need to better incentivise training schemes as this could serve as the carrot for the businesses to invest in training. Other countries have gone through this path and are reaping rewards in their efforts.
Charles says, “Whoever is giving training is fully competent to carry out this training. We have to ensure that trainers are industry based. We also need to ensure that the courses offered are relevant to the industry. Offering courses, which are not seen as providing prospective employees with the relevant tools, are only serving as a disservice to the industry. A national training plan needs to be organised where all bodies concerned such as ITS, University, MHRA, HCIMA, and private training companies would be able to contribute towards its development and implementation.”
Charles painfully points out: “At present I cannot speak of much collaboration between these different entities. Each follows its own agenda with little input from the other. It seems that we are too afraid of losing our particular territory. Just as an example HCIMA Malt, that is an HR related association totally dedicated to the improvement of the professionals in the industry, is completely ignored. We have spoken in several fora on the university course leading to BA Tourism, which we argue should be rerouted to a BA Hospitality course as this is where we have a great shortage of qualified employees but still nothing happens.”
Charles’s biggest wish is to see the Ministry of Tourism initiate schemes aimed at changing the present stigma that exists in our industry when it comes to training. “The only way that our industry will survive and be sustainable is to offer our visitors an excellent service. The times of offering a shoddy service at a cheap price are long gone. We can only compete if what we offer is better than our competitors’ offer. Many a times we have had lip service on this subject without any concrete action being taken. We need to move from speaking to implementing what we preach.”
evaristbartolo@hotmail.com
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