Country fends for itself as Nationalist MPs engage in leadership race - Mangion

The change of leader of the Nationalist Party will not lead the Malta Labour Party to seek a new leader, MLP deputy leader Charles Mangion said yesterday.

The change of PN leader was a decision by that party and the sole interest of the Labour Party was the national interest, Dr Mangion said.

"The change of PN leader has led the country to continue to fend for itself as Nationalist MPs jockey for position in the leadership race in that party," he argued.

Answering questions at MLP headquarters in Hamrun during a news conference on the current financial situation, Dr Mangion said the Labour Party would be prepared to back all initiatives that were beneficial to the country.

"As regards the social pact that the government has now taken on as a new buzzword, such a pact is a contract and before entering into a contract one had first to know the contents and the results that such an agreement was likely to have," he noted.

Earlier, Dr Mangion said that the government had failed to rein in the deficit. While by the end of last year the Finance Minister had planned a deficit of Lm75 million, the deficit is actually Lm105 million.

In considering the real deficit one has to keep in mind that last year the government had a number of one-off payments including Lm2.8 million consisting of VAT from Maltacom and the sale of the Vodafone shares by Maltacom; Lm4.5 million from the investment registration scheme, while about Lm3 million in income tax refunds were not paid out.

If one were to add up these one-off payments, the real deficit would be closer to Lm115 million, Dr Mangion claimed.

While exports last year took a dip and the cost of living continued to rise, tourism took another blow as a number of cruise line companies announced that they would not be calling at Malta because of the new situation arising from Malta's EU membership.

Dr Mangion said that in view of this all the tourism minister did was to say that he would be commissioning a report.

The MLP deputy leader felt that the government must surely have anticipated such a development and the solution to make up for this loss of visitors was definitely not the commissioning of a report.

"There is an immediate need to bring public expenditure under control. There is a great need for good governance, which includes the trimming of spending in public entities.

"The auditor's report is the apex and the quintessence of incompetence in public organisations including the failure to meet deadlines and the inability to keep to quotations for jobs done," Dr Mangion continued.

He appealed to the government to come up with a moratorium on new taxation not to mention the fees paid for permits and licences.