|
Patronage and clientelism are so successful, everyone still thinks the state owes them a living
A correspondent writing a letter published in a recent edition of The Times took great pains to confess that while driving his car, he was enticed to watch the manoeuvres of the aircraft taking part in the Malta Air Show. The predictable happened. The correspondent’s lack of attention at the driving wheel landed him, car and all, in someone’s living room. The correspondent felt he had to make this public confession not only to warn other drivers of the dangers resulting from distractions while driving but also to suggest that government ought to spend a few thousand liri in a campaign highlighting such perils!
The letter is astounding not so much for the silly public confession that it contained but because it reflected a type of mentality that is espoused by those who expect the state to do everything for them, embracing with gusto the idea of the state as the citizen’s nanny. On the other hand, I happen to be one who not only resents the state acting as my nanny and guardian angel but also one who firmly believes that our economic future can be brighter the sooner all notions of the ‘nanny state’ are abandoned.
Our culture being what it is, I can see why many keep on clinging to the nanny state idea. These people seem to think that the state owes them a living and pester their MP for a job or for anything that they fancy. Political patronage and clientelism is so successful because many feel that they can use the system to their advantage.
This aspect of our culture is, to be sure, akin to that in other Mediterranean countries. In the past most workers in Italy got their job through the ‘raccomandazione’ system, much like what used to happen in Malta. Like Italy, Malta is now fighting the manifestations of the inefficiency brought about by such systems, including – but not exclusively – an overburdened public sector. Were it not for the fact that Italy is in the euro zone, its present problems would have probably enticed its leaders to resort to the ‘old trick’ of devaluation, which, not so coincidentally, seems to be also on Alfred Sant’s agenda.
Indeed, Sant’s agenda seems hell bent on reinforcing the ‘nanny state’ concept. He has already declared that once in power, he will not be enthusiastically waving the EU flag and that he is not in favour of Malta adopting the euro for some time. The common European currency is in fact boosting the EU’s efforts to fight the economic phenomenon of competitive devaluations that prevailed in the past. The EU is currently experiencing, in quite a full measure, the economic and psychological consequences of its member states having boosted what can only be termed ‘nanny state’ policies in the past half century.
Alfred Sant speaks as if he is not aware that a country is not rendered competitive through devaluation but by increasing the productivity of the workforce by, among other things, doing without outdated time-wasting work practices. He seems to be unaware of Malta’s bitter experience under the aegis of Dom Mintoff who wasted most of the money he had obtained through the 1972-79 defence facilities rent agreement by attempting to create heavy industries that were obviously uncompetitive even in their embryonic stage.
A ‘nanny state’ is what Mintoff tried to set up, with everyone thanking Providence for the magnitude of the great leader, with citizens – from unionised workers to sham entrepreneurs – behaving like little children, expecting over-protection from the state for their hopelessly inadequate competitiveness.
If we are to judge the MLP by the utterances of Alfred Sant and his acolytes, they do not consider productivity as the key to success and they have no desire to increase our negligible labour mobility. One does not hear them encouraging our workers to adopt a regime of flexibility or encouraging semi-retired persons and working mothers to opt for part-time work. We only hear them giving assurances that they will again set up loss-making ventures like ‘Sea Malta’! Their ‘vision’ for the future consists of boring speeches about how much the workers are ‘poor’ and deserving of state money when in the real Malta a very high proportion of employed people go to work in their cars while phoning their mother or their friends on their mobile phones.
While the MLP propaganda machine keeps on trying to score cheap propaganda points by alleging that there is an unemployment crisis, last Sunday it-Torca reported a speech made by GWU deputy secretary general, Michael Parnis in which he complained about the number of persons who are registering as unemployed but then refuse to take up job offers made by the ETC. He said that he reckons that out of 8,000 registered unemployed only some 1,500 are honestly trying to find a job and even propounded the theory that most of the problem stems from the fact that unemployment benefits given to a married man are only Lm5 less than the weekly minimum wage! It is such incredible and unacceptable situations that bolster the ‘nanny state’.
Sound public finance is only possible if there is no squandering of taxes for ‘nanny state’ benefits or projects. The sure and steady switch to sound public finances is perhaps the greatest achievement of the Gonzi administration, even though it is not appreciated as much as it deserves to be. Government’s efforts are now getting the desired results. The number of gainfully employed is on the increase, whatever the MLP says; and Malta’s competitiveness has gone up in the relative international ratings.
Yet I am sure that there are many who will keep hoping against hope, longing to keep on clinging to the aprons of the ‘nanny state’. But this country can excel and be successful only if we grow up and face the real world. The Gonzi administration has gone a long way towards achieving this goal.
The pertinent question is whether those who want to cling to the ‘nanny state’ will manage to upset the applecart and push for a change of government that can only mean a step backwards in this regard.
|
