The bigger the lie

Labour’s message for the past 10 years is that, prior to its 2013 victory. we had spent 25 years in economic depression and were led by leaders who knew nothing and who did nothing for the country.

People need reminding. The young need to know what it was really like.

In 1987, the last year of the Labour government, the Malta Drydocks had a workforce of 2,600 despite having no work for years. It had an accumulated debt equivalent to €740 million and was a strain on the country’s finances.

In 2003, then Social Policy Minister Lawrence Gonzi transferred 900 of these skilled workers into an industrial projects services company, which carried out maintenance and jobs for local councils and government departments. Within seven years, nearly all these dockers were absorbed into new employment opportunities like SR Technik and Lufthansa.

When Speaker of the House, Gonzi introduced the Public Accounts Committee that was chaired by an opposition member, and the MPs’ annual declaration of personal assets. In 2014, the Castille Rahebs silently excluded the duty to declare one’s spouse’s assets and income, which we all realised later was an integral part of the Panama Road Map.

Speaker Gonzi, as chairman of the National Commission for the Disabled, pushed and achieved a reform in the education system, which integrated disabled children into mainstream schools with the introduction of hundreds of LSAs.

At the same time the law was changed to allow disabled persons to keep receiving their lifetime pension, even if they happen to inherit their own house through the death of parents. Prior to this, the disabled in this situation were bumped out of the system and forgotten.

There were also other improvements, too many to mention.

In those 25 years, before the coming of the Rahebs, we saw the establishment of MCAST and ITS as part of a modern, long-term based educational policy to cater for the new industries being attracted to the country. A first time research department was set up at the University of Malta. New schools were built, one every year. Students received free software and scholarships.

In the energy sector, all you heard from Raheb Żeppi was his take on the BWSC power station – that it was a “cancer factory”. But when he was given the power to remedy the problem, he simply sold it outright to the Chinese to continue operating it by using the same heavy fuel, the only difference being that these new foreign owners of one third of the national grid were given a minimum public guaranteed profit on their investment.  

The second Sicily interconnector idea is now an “innovative, ground-breaking step towards de-carbonisation” according to Raheb Bertu. The first interconnector was only useful to him as a fake alibi for scores of blackouts until the blackout summer of 2023, when instead he blamed the sun and the rain.

Next time you address your faithful followers, Bertu of Ragusa, do not be dishonest towards Gonzi- Eddie Aquilina

Rahebs are not good at knowing that infrastructure needs upgrading when the demand increases.

The second Gladiator film and €143 million of our taxes, we are told, are now “creating 1,700 full-time positions” in a new film industry. In per capita terms, that is like an €85,000 subsidy spent on each one of these supposed new jobs. And just take their word that it’s a fantastic one-for-three-euro investment.

How does this compare to the thousands of subsidy-free quality jobs created in the pharmaceutical industry and financial services field during the pre-2013 years? 

Wasteserv was created to initiate the first attempts at recycling waste. Before 1987, all building and domestic-produced waste was simply dumped in a pile along the Salina coast road. That’s how the Magħtab landfill and its smells came to be.

In the health sector, the Fenech Adami/Gonzi administrations built and opened up the new modern and public Mater Dei Hospital for business, at the same cost that the Muscat/Abela administration spent on a new toilet at the still defunct St Luke’s Hospital. The transfer of hundreds of patients from St Luke’s to Mater Dei took only a few weeks and went without incident.

Three new major sewage treatments plants were built – Malta North (Ċumnija), Malta South (Ta’ Barkat) and Gozo (Ras il-Ħobz), which gave the sea around Malta a clean bill of health.

Today, the recent unsustainable 25 per cent increase in the population shows the Rahebs’ ignorance about what quality of life actually is. This summer, Balluta Bay, for example, was shut down for the whole season because of serious sewage pollution.

We became a member of the European Union despite the Rahebs’ divine attempts to oppose the move. They then quickly converted when they saw an opportunity of getting their holy hands on the successful financial package, which the Gonzi team negotiated with the EU.

Public sector employment during these years was skinned down. Gonzi as prime minister did not employ 73 political agents as his own personal “persons of trust”.  

What you are not being told is that during the period 1987 to 2013, Malta changed from a third world country aligned to dictators like Kim Il Sung, Ceaușescu and Gaddafi, into a fully fledged and credible European member country with proven democratic credentials.

Eddie Aquilina

Next time you address your faithful followers, Bertu of Ragusa, as you recently did in Marsaxlokk, do not be dishonest towards Gonzi. If you want to know what a gentleman he was and still is, ask my friend, your father – he knows him well.