Editorial

It is probable that in 12, 15 months' time this country will go to the polls. Three months before, the country will vote in a referendum on whether to join the European Union. At this point in time, when the people's minds are already set on these two upcoming events, it is pertinent to ask where we stand.

The opposition would like to convince us that we are in hell, when it is obvious that apart from the heat there is nothing infernal about the overall situation. The government would persuade us that we are in heaven when there is nothing celestial about the situation. The truth is that we are on earth and we have problems to solve and successes to be pleased with.

There are those who paint a gloomy economic picture; others paint one full of promise and colour. We tend towards the latter but we never forget that the country is not all smelling like roses. There are those who moan about investment and nobody would argue that we do need more and more of this. It is unfair to claim, however, that the island is in a complete state of stagnation.

Private sector investment, for instance, is on the rise. The Tigné-Manoel Island project has got off the ground with all the ancillary economic activity that this will create. The Cottonera project is taking shape. Since September 1998, 1,600 licences for new businesses have been issued and more than 150 projects have been approved by the Malta Development Corporation. These cannot operate in a stagnant environment.

The successful and partial privatisation of Malta International Airport, as well as Air Malta's joint venture with Lufthansa Technik, last month, will both be positive contributors to the economy and to Malta's name internationally. There is a glimmer of light for the shipyards and a measure of rationalisation in enterprises that have for decades wrung tens of millions of Maltese liri from the taxpayer.

When the finance minister declares that the country is on track to reach the targets he set in his budget speech, it means, among other things, that the deficit which stood at Lm150 million in 1998, has been more or less licked. This is an outstanding achievement. His critics will counter by pointing at a national debt, which, at over a billion Maltese liri, shows no sign of abating. It is not a criticism to be taken lightly. Others will take a swipe at the environment and hold this up as one glaring failure on the part of the government. We would agree as there has been very, very little progress on this score.

Driving Malta forward is the government's ambition for the country to be a member of the EU. Attempting to driving Malta back is the opposition's attitude towards membership and its current attitude to the referendum being called by the government for the electorate to decide whether to give its approval to membership or not.

It is an attitude that is not doing Malta's need for investment any good at all and much harm. Some responsible elements in the Labour Party see this, but there are still not enough of them to force Alfred Sant to abandon a position that they know is disastrous for the country and for the party itself.

The heaven the government sees in membership is seen as hell by Dr Sant, but not by all the opposition. The truth, once again, is that membership is neither an infernal nor a celestial matter but the best available choice open to Malta.

The future has arrived.