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There are limits to how figures and numbers get interpreted, so when Austin Gatt vented his frustration on a radio programme and insisted in his stylish Gozitan way we were wrong and he was right… I could only laugh.
We stand by what we printed, namely that the price of fuel oil was stable in this current year. And that there is no justification to link a 17 per cent surcharge on electricity and water tariffs to a fuel oil hike because there was no such thing.
For months, the government machine has been oiling a myth.
The myth confuses crude oil with refined fuel oil. The price of crude oil in dollars to the barrel was increasing, but Malta does not buy crude oil.
The radio programme on Sunday morning was hosted by David Agius, a Member of Parliament known for his endurance in keeping up a smile and a laugh at the wrong moment and for the wrong reason.
In the background, a former Minister tied the knots.
So cocksure was Austin Gatt about this newspaper being incorrect, that he went through great lengths to suggest that I, with a pot belly and a bushy beard, should replace a gorgeous blonde on The Sun’s page three.
It is a monumental compliment to be confused with a page three girl. And since I am immune to sexual taunts, I take this as sign of respect.
Dr Gatt should step on his brakes for a second and take a good look at the numbers - then he will have to admit that we were right all the way, and he was wrong.
But Austin does not like to be wrong.
MaltaToday earned itself a fair share of denigratory adjectives, needless to say from those who only a few weeks before were all praise for this newspaper.
Hold your horses – just read this one issued on the 17 September 2004 by Austin Gatt himself on a story about the faulty gas cylinders which had to be recalled:
“The Ministry for Investments, Industry and Technology and Information wishes to express its gratitude to the owners and journalists of MaltaToday for withholding sensitive information on faulty gas cylinder and showing great responsibility to avoid creating unnecessary alarm with the public.”
Hardly a better certificate for being a serious newspaper. So one week we are responsible beings, and weeks later we mutate into rags and scum.
Weeks later, when MaltaToday wrote a story basing its arguments on facts and calling the surcharge a sham, the spin machine went into overdrive.
Needless to say, the people who attempted to rubbish the fuel oil story have not heard about exchange rates. Neither have they heard that the dollar was close to 2 dollars to the lira three years ago and now reached 3 dollars to the lira.
Now, this does not make for good Sunday reading.
However once you get your revised electricity and water rates, these sombre words will make essential reading. Austin compares us to The Sun but if we were such a tabloid I would be filthy rich and feeling very important. One must not forget the role The Sun played in electing first Thatcher, a Tory, and then Blair, a Labourite, as British Prime Minister.
I can fully understand that Enemalta is a loss-making company and something has to be done about it. It is only too sad that it has taken the Nationalist government 17 years to realise this. But Austin Gatt cannot expect us not to look at the figures and take everything he says for granted.
Austin is a go-getter and on that level, no one should doubt his abilities. Yet, when it comes to the media he has this problem that most politicians have. He does not balance his rough edges with the Gonzi kind of smiles and laughs. Gonzi laughs off an intelligent question with a bland answer, and it is a laugh that goes on for ages.
He did this in an interview I had with him last week. In the interview where I could have been definitely been more incisive I found a nervous uncomfortable Prime Minister who hit out at MaltaToday and questioned its independence followed by an eerie laugh that is unnatural.
The biggest problem a minister has is having an entourage who eggs him on, to be a gladiator. What his immediate advisors should be doing is controlling his impulses.
His boys are in fact acquiring a reputation of being minuscule replicas of Richard Cachia Caruana. But to be fair to Richard, none of them have his capacity to ‘control’ and to spin in such a fine and gallant manner.
The government is perfectly right in addressing energy costs. Or better still, at looking at how fuel oil is purchased, and when I talk about purchase I am not talking about hedging, but about buying.
Yet the government is obliged to use the right arguments and the right approach. The kerosene hike is a perfect example of a froga, in the metaphorical sense of course.
Dr Gonzi’s argument is that bus owners mix kerosene with diesel so there is justification for a nation wide price hike on kerosene, to dissuade the illegal practice.
But in his frenzy for balancing budgets, the elderly low-income pensioners who use kerosene for heating, if not cooking were completely forgotten.
This country, or village as my good friend calls it, is fast becoming a class society, with the rich, the middle class and a struggling band of poor.
Every year we are made to feel better through the stupendously frivolous ‘lottery’ to raise funds for charity. They call it Istrina. I prefer to call it the national shame.
It is a perfect pantomime of hypocrisy.
The first charitable steps we should be taking is sending a resounding NO to decreasing purchasing power.
What do we get instead? We are force-fed to a circus with fat men in skirts, gifts against cash donationas. politicians as telephone operators and hosts marketing human misery in a lottery of the lowest moral calibre.
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