Victorious Victor?

Added to an ever-inefficient, always late, ending too early, never-there-when-you-need-it public transport, this strike certainly adds insult to my injury. My big injury is that I don’t have a car, and I rely on the Malta Bus to travel to school, to work, and to venture out at night.

This is the big faux pas of the transport workers – they forgot that even before their ‘paralyzing’ strike, public opinion was already geared very much against them, and rightly so. The service has never been good, and the people know it, the cars out on the road show it. That the ATP should have the temerity to strike, to demand more rights, is seen by many as an insult too many.

Unfortunately for him, Mr Victor Spiteri is no politician, and he is certainly not as well versed in working up public sympathy as the Transport Minister is. Mr Spiteri was the man who said “We will strike, and we will paralyze the whole country”, and this very first utterance of his was met with outright disgust. Militancy is not in fashion anymore, and tough talk like that earns Mr Spiteri no sympathy.

Meanwhile, I find it hard to understand why Mr Spiteri did not realize what an obvious mess he was getting into. Maybe it’s all about the different strata in our society. I, an avid internet explorer, newspaper reader, and frequenter of the middle classes, know that such talk as Mr Spiteri’s is suicide. But maybe not everyone reads the same newspapers as me, and not everyone follows the comments on timesofmalta.com as keenly, so not everyone knows.

The striking drivers probably don’t really understand what liberalization will mean. Austin Gatt said they probably think the government is out to sell their buses “or something of the sort”. But all of them received the letter from Government before the election saying public transport will be left alone, and they feel let down. Some of the drivers are Labourites who abhor anything that smells of government, as too much listening to Manwel Cuschieri invariably leads to. Maybe these are the reasons why they are striking so whole-heartedly. Maybe I understand them. But I don’t understand Victor Spiteri, who is supposed to be their leader, who is supposed to be thinking up intelligent strategy, and who is supposed to be out there calming his people down.

Is it intelligent strategy to ask the whole transport service to strike for eleven hearses? With this skewed sense of proportionality Mr Spiteri lost all sympathy, and when the buses’ turn comes, he is going to have no one to turn to. It was all so badly executed that, without Austin Gatt having to work very hard at it, his popularity soared right through the roof.

The big question now is what Mr Spiteri will do next. You have to feel sorry for him – he moved a whole army to defend eleven hearses, and now the hearses negotiated with the enemy behind his back. He has to face his vicious army and tell them what happened. He can say that they weren’t defeated, that they got what they were fighting for, but oh what a sad victory to speak of.

Before singing eulogies to the government I should probably remind myself that PN-led governments have been sitting on the transport bomb for twenty years. Even in 2008, only AD bothered writing about liberalization of the transport sector in its electoral manifesto. Twenty years is as long as my life, and I certainly am not thankful for the service I have had to put up with during my early carless years. But I do understand better late than never, so yes, way to go Austin Gatt, you’ve handled it really well.

I am still stuck at home waiting for this historic moment to be over. I just hope that by that time the old system will be history too.

Sylvia Cremona is reading a Communications Degree at the University of Malta. She forms part of Insite – The Student Media Organisation. www.insite.org.mt