This article was published in the Times of Malta on Thursday 28th February 2013
In a few days’ time, voters will be choosing who will lead the country in the coming five years and who will be representing them in Parliament. This is not an instinctive decision to take. It is not a gamble.
Therefore, amid the colourful billboards, nice slogans and rhetoric, it’s important for the discerning voter to focus on the important. On the priorities. On the essentials.
The world has just been through the worst economic recession of these past 80 years, from which it has not yet fully recovered. In many countries, banks crumbled, governments collapsed, jobs were lost, University fees raised, pensions reduced, health services diminished, tourism suffered. In many countries, people are suffering the consequences of populist decisions and the failures of governments to take the necessary hard decisions because of electoral needs.
Not so in our country.
During this recession, the Nationalist Party in government has achieved. It has set a record in terms of the highest number of gainfully employed people Malta has ever had, four straight years of records in tourism arrivals with increases in the number of nights and money spent here.
It has increased the number of courses and the student population in the University, Mcast, the Institute of Tourism Studies, the Junior College and Higher Secondary, setting another record in the percentage of students pursuing post-secondary education, granting post-secondary scholarships, where not only is education free but where students receive a stipend.
We are the top country in Europe where graduates find employment. We are at the top of Europe when it comes to the percentage of women under the age of 35 in employment, witnessing significant increases in all age-groups. We have become an economic model envied by many European countries, including Cyprus, the country Joseph Muscat wanted us to follow. In this scenario, the PN is risking becoming a victim of its own success. Because bringing a parallel to Maslow’s pyramid of needs, once the Maltese people have started to take their jobs, education, pensions, economic success and health services for granted, even during the worst recession of our times, we have been grumbling about public transport and parking problems at the University.
It doesn’t mean all is rosy. It doesn’t mean these issues are not important. We do have our problems. We do have our challenges to face. And the PN is ready to tackle them, presenting a costed electoral programme that plans to reach a balanced budget by 2015 by building on the proven methods of job creation and economic growth that managed to overcome the recession, tackling further fiscal evasion and social benefit abuse, imposing harsher penalties for law abusers and corruption and sustaining the economy and our quality of life. And its performance is backed up by its achievements during periods of crisis.
While Labour has attempted to emulate much of these proposals, it is still made up of the same people who converted VAT to CET and 33 more taxes, who opposed EU membership, who led us for just 22 months over the past 25 years when the number of gainfully occupied people decreased and when we had two years of record deficit. These people included Muscat. And while his attempts at ‘let us forget the past and look to the future’ are futile efforts to make us see his previous mistakes and his lack of vision, we do need to have a look at his track record and his newly-found acknowledgements of past mistakes.
At the end of the day, on March 10, gone will be the movements, gone will be the slogans and gone will be the colourful billboards. On March 10, a political party in government will be at work and it will need to take political decisions. And it’s the people who are going to make these decisions that we need to assess and choose.
Such decisions cannot be made by politicians who realise their mistakes years later. We need politicians who can see in advance what our country will in the future, especially in the highly-dynamic world we are living in. If they get it wrong, it is us who will have to pay for it.
That’s why Muscat’s “I-will-resign-if-I-get-it-wrong-again” is not enough. The damage would already have been done.
Yes, we can discuss the needs at the top end of Maslow’s pyramid but only if we ensure that its base is strong enough. The base made up of the economy, job creation, education and health.
And it’s the PN that has always ensured the strength of this base, which has opened up the doors of opportunity, even when it was opposed by Muscat.
Through the EU membership bid, through the Libyan crisis, through the fiscal crisis, through the oil and cereal price hikes, through the great recession, we have sailed forward.
We have strengthened the pyramid’s base and allowed our nation to look higher, to aspire for more.
That’s what we will keep doing. That’s why my choice is PN. And that’s why the PN should be your choice too.
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