There is nothing new about Labour. Labour’s propaganda secretary, Norma Saliba, hand-picked by Robert Abela himself, last Thursday gave us 700 words attacking the Nationalist Party. One would have expected Saliba to be boasting about the budget that her finance minister presented with so much pomp. But Labour has no positive flag to wave from last week’s budget.
Saliba continued the process she started when she was running the national broadcaster, PBS, which has been found guilty many times of being a propaganda machine for the Labour government.
PBS has been lambasted by courts for its imbalance, yet, PBS persists because that is what its master wants to it do. And, now that Saliba is officially part of the party machine, she can do it more overtly.
The budget measure most people are speaking about is the fact that most people must now work a year more before they can start enjoying their pension. Or retire and keep paying national insurance contributions for another year.
It is, whichever way you look at it, a lose-lose situation for Maltese people. Gone is the promise that foreigners are needed to be brought to work here to pay for our pensions.
Labour is in the habit of always blaming others for all the country’s problems. Nothing is ever its fault. There is always someone or something to blame but never the Labour government’s policies.
Just look at the chaotic traffic situation. We were promised we would spend more time with our families, as travelling time was going to be reduced because of Labour’s projects. Sure, everyone is spending more time with their loved ones, only if they are with them in their cars.
What used to be a 20-minute journey takes at least 40 minutes or an hour now. But it’s the people’s fault as they are using their cars. As if 10 years ago people were not using their cars. It is not the fault of the explosion in population, due to the government’s policy of importing cheap labour that has led to more cars on the road.
No one is celebrating the miserly increases people will be getting because there is nothing to celebrate. The cost-of-living increase is still being taxed, even though this is meant to compensate for expenditure made last year, which people already paid tax on, hence, they are being taxed twice.
Young couples have nothing to celebrate. A property that 10 years ago cost €150,000, now costs €350,000. Wages have not doubled under Labour. On the contrary, people’s disposable income has seen unprecedented erosion through inflation and the rising costs of medicines goods and services, across the board.
The budget measure most people are speaking about is the fact that most people must now work a year more before they can enjoy their pension- Eddie Aquilina
Saliba said nothing about the fact that the government finds it easy to splash money on lavish ministers’ cars. On fake projects such as Project Green. Yet, is has no money for MCAST lecturers, whose collective agreement expired three years ago and, despite promises by Prime Minister Robert Abela, there is no end in sight to this saga.
Just like when she was running PBS, Saliba wrote nothing about corruption surrounding the multi-million Electrogas project, or about the over €400 million her government paid to Vitals – a process which the courts and the auditor general said was highly structured to ensure consistent profits for Vitals instead of improving the health service.
Try to convince a patient, who must spend 10 or 14 hours and, sometimes, even longer at the hospital’s emergency department before being given a bed, that the health service has improved. This is not the fault of doctors, paramedics and nurses. It is only the fault of the government, which has adopted a policy of increasing the country’s population through encouraging huge numbers of foreigners to work in Malta.
In contrast to the sad state of our country, we have the PN’s vision. The PN has been consistent about the need for a sustainable economic model focused on quality of life rather than rapid population growth. The PN has shown, time and time again, that the government’s policies are creating unsustainable debt levels, with projections reaching €10 billion, while neglecting the country’s infrastructure and social services.
The Labour government took Malta literally back to the dark ages with continuous power cuts, which are then blamed on ‘heating cables’ and ‘the interconnector’, rather on the incompetence of a government that failed to invest in the distribution network in a timely manner. A PN government had ensured there was surplus energy generation to cater for the demand.
The PN has been focusing on the need to strengthen services and placing well-qualified individuals in leadership positions to rebuild trust in Malta’s institutions, which, sadly, have gone to the dogs. The PN wants institutions to work without fear or favour.
As things stand, the common citizen who finds a ticket under his car’s windscreen wiper for forgetting to set the time when parking must pay a fine. While those who ransacked our country run around with yachts and invest in property while they are in power, even though their declarations of assets show them to be paupers.
Saliba’s article showed us nothing new. It just continued to show that people cannot expect better or anything new from the most corrupt government in Malta’s political history.