Sea Malta (3) - Island interest overboard

Personalities aside, how correct was the Prime Minister in the way he tried to justify why he and the government decided Sea Malta had to be privatised and the key service to our island economy left to a public service obligation on the buyer, paid for out of public funds?

Few will disagree that the public purse - the taxes we pay, the public debt we are burdened with - should not continue to finance loss-making public enterprises. But credibility demands consistency.

The government wields its surgical knife depending on the ability of the enterprise - for which read employees - to counter-react. Or, on blatantly political considerations. A clear example was provided by Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi in his letter of acceptance of Marlene Mizzi's resignation from the Sea Malta board.

He dismissed her reference to Sea Malta's savings on administrative outlays. In one example of crude, reiterated sarcasm he described them as "eminently admirable" - but "insignificant, when one considers that the shipping line is not in a financial position to afford its own boats".

Dr Gonzi threw a banana skin under his feet, there. Who had paid for the new boats of Gozo Channel Ltd, also a state enterprise - and a monopoly? Not the company. Has the company, all of a sudden, sailed into a financial position to finance its own boats? That miracle has yet to happen. Is the Prime Minister, then, saying that Gozo Channel Ltd will be privatised?

The Freeport was not in a financial position to finance acquisition of equipment to enable it to operate. Heavy borrowing was resorted to. The Freeport was not in a position to service that borrowing. Loans had to be guaranteed, and serviced, by the state.

Should the equipment not have been bought? Who is still forking out the funds required to meet that loan servicing?

The government is not in a financial position to pay for itself without loading more public debt on this and future generations. In the absence of some miracle, a shortfall could occur forever and ever. Is there some business plan to privatise the government?

The government's reaction to Ms Mizzi's outpour as she strode away so as not to be a party to the government's plans for Sea Malta was, at best, petulant and misconceived. That still leaves the company's employees walking the plank, to hurtle into the cold waters of the jobless.

The risk of personal economic death - losing one's job - is part of economic life. It is discriminatory that public sector employees are not exposed to the effects of the rise and fall of economic waters in the same manner as private sector workers. It is also blatantly discriminatory to treat public employees differently to each other.

Pouring scorn and firing cannon shots at an outgoing chairman appointed by a Labour administration, retained twice by incoming Nationalist governments and a third time when there was a switch in the prime ministerial position, and who left on her own steam, does not erase the injustice of treating equals unequally.

Nor does it remove the reality that Malta is a small island. A reliable sea link to the "mainland" is essential to it. That link should be as cost-efficient as can be. Having fulfilled that criterion, it cannot be made totally dependent upon market forces. The public service obligation is a limited safeguard. It is not, and cannot be, a guarantee that the crucial sea link will be maintained should the economic winds blow so ill they bode no good whatsoever.

The eventual purely commercial operator of the service now provided by Sea Malta, no matter how transparently selected, cannot guarantee sustainability. The overriding issue in the eye of the storm over Sea Malta is not Ms Mizzi, or Austin Gatt. Nor even that of the future of the employees.

It is the good interest of Malta itself. To use the Prime Minister's words to Ms Mizzi, one fails to understand why the government persists in negating this simple reality. That negation, too, could become a spectre that will come to haunt Dr Gonzi along the 40 months he has left to call a general election. Meanwhile, Malta's enduring interest will still have been thrown overboard.

(Concluded)