The untouchables

There have been many times when Alternattiva Demokratika has been the only light for those freefalling down the dark chasm between the two dominant political blocs. Very often we have rendered ourselves unpopular by appearing to champion a person or a class of persons who have become politically untouchable.

For almost 40 years it has been in the interest of both the other political parties to hide the fact that the assets in the Bical story always outweighed by far any liabilities and, to this day, the money has always been available to pay off all the monies due to depositors.

It has suited administration after administration to hide the facts and plunder the Pace empire. Cecil Pace is just one person, given a bad name and hanged. Perhaps it would have suited us best to keep clear of the story which persists as a big stink in Malta's political present, a remnant of a bygone era.

Perhaps we should have left Anthony Mifsud alone. A prison warden framed and jailed under a Labour administration for the Bartolo and Habib jailbreak, he was left to rot by a PN administration which quibbled for decades over the loss of earnings due to him and never stepped forward to compensate him. He was just one person, another untouchable.

Perhaps we should not have spoken out about skyrocketing property prices and the absurdity of our rent laws. Appearing to champion property owners cheated for 60 years of anything resembling a reasonable return from their capital or even of the use of it, again found us defending the untouchables. Amazingly these people, cheated for decades, had been portrayed as skinflints and scrooges sucking the blood out of penniless tenants. We were portrayed as having no social conscience. We still put it all on the political agenda and have come a long way to setting the record straight. We mentioned the fact of opportunistic millionaire tenants squatting for decades in properties rented for a song. One sued me but we persist in our referendum bid.

Political savvy should have driven us to steer clear of the immigration issue. Perhaps we should have ducked, dodged and waffled like the rest of the political class. We did not. Humans must be treated like humans in terms of our Constitution.

With many others, we have acknowledged the extraordinary burden carried by Malta, we have insisted on the need for energetic action by the EU, for burden sharing and amendment to the Dublin Convention. We have been alone in insisting that, whatever the circumstances, Malta must never inflict inhuman and degrading treatment on anyone. Many people seem to think that Malta should.

When we first spoke out on divorce in 1992, no other political party dared pick up the issue. There was a deafening silence that has lasted almost without interruption for 15 very long years. Nobody has ever been able to explain why one Maltese couple married in Malta, also by religious rite, can legally obtain a divorce abroad which is fully recognised by our courts and another, similarly married, cannot divorce in Malta. We were in a minuscule minority when we first defended people who would choose to remarry after a separation if they were allowed to do so. Today we are no longer alone.

We spoke out for the late Karmenu Grima falsely labelled in our political mythology as the would-be assassin of Dom Mintoff. His case was never tried. He was packed off to a mental hospital for a decade, imprisoned without being condemned except in the media. He was never rehabilitated. The official version of the facts was never challenged except by AD. The PN balked at the prospect of exploding the Mintoffian myth. Will nobody even apologise?

Now there are the 1,700 indefensible people employed at Malta Drydocks. They have been political cannon fodder for as long as anyone can remember. Since Labour muscled in on the moderates in the 1950s, the dockyard has been its greatest pool of unionised workers, its best infantry: Obedient and malleable, bringing fear and its close cousin, hatred, to the hearts of its adversaries.

In the last 20 years, dockyard workers have been treated as a barely defused bomb by the 1987-1996 PN administration, then confused utterly by the reforms implemented out of the blue by the short-lived MLP administration and once again left in limbo by the returning PN.

The loudly hailed restructuring of the drydocks by the present administration meant that an astounding Lm300 million were written off Malta's public accounts. Hundreds of workers were transferred to underemployment with the government and it was called a success. It added little to the image of dockyard workers.

They were made out to be under obligation to the rest of us for keeping them in their jobs, for subsidising them and their families for so long. At every opportunity they were made out to be lazy, unruly and possibly violent. The PN had managed to put the MLP on the defensive in the PR battle. The workers were left to their own devices.

Had MDD been a private enterprise and lost Lm10 million in one year would the management have dared to blame the workers? In such a situation how can Minister Austin Gatt turn up to scold and threaten the enterprise with doom without uttering a single mea culpa?

Does he not know that his local competition, without subsidies and debt remission, has gone from strength to strength, buying floating docks and servicing vessels at sea at a profit, while the enterprise under his custodianship, with its capital assets all paid up many decades ago, has managed to lose another Lm10 million in one year? It is time to stop this nonsense of blaming everything on drydocks workers. They certainly have a fault or two as do Cecil Pace, Karmenu Grima, and Anthony Mifsud, the landlord lobby, immigrants and would be divorcees. Making them Malta's political untouchables only serves to hide the facts and the real problems; it only serves to herd us into demanding a final solution without pity and without considering the consequences.

For more than 50 years the dockyard has cost Malta much more than our combined national debt. It has been yet another harrowing cost of the power struggle between the PN and the MLP, the immense cost of political stagnation and energy investment in the status quo. Now the PN takes credit for writing it off and the MLP slides into the shadows.

Dr Gatt sets the scene for the final act and nobody dares whisper a word. A total 1,700 wage-earners will freefall down the dark abyss between the two major political parties, mere collateral damage from a political war lasting half a century and more.

AD demands a full account of the situation, a full exposé of where the losses were made, how they could have been avoided, how a profit could have been sought, what must be changed.

We are willing to contribute with our own ideas, our energies and our familiarity with the technologies of the future this administration seems to fear. With shipping traffic expected to rise by 60 per cent in the next few years, this may not be the time to prepare MDD's coup de grâce.

Dr Vassallo is chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - the Green party.

www.alternattiva.org.mt, www.adgozo.com