Our Party leaders might lack zing, but they certainly draw the crowds. Thousands of people thronged the streets of Cottonera and the Granaries in Floriana to support their respective parties on Sunday at the first mass meetings of the electoral campaign.
So what does that tell us about the masses? That most have nothing better to do, perhaps! And will it be the thousands who stayed away because they do have a life that will make the difference?
Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, who might not be a firecracker but has the advantage energy-wise, told the masses that a PN government meant stability, while a Labour administration would mean uncertainty.
Dr Gonzi made much of the MLP stand on Europe, which lost it the last election, because, he said, the MLP had failed to convince the electorate that joining Europe was not a good idea. Europe is once again being used as part of the campaign arsenal, because Alfred Sant is saying he wants to “reopen the accession package”.
Surely it is too late for that? The package was open to negotiation before accession. While there might be elements, such as deadlines, which could be extended, talking about reopening the accession package does seem rather like an act of reckless bravado.
The leader of the Opposition said on Sunday that his government “could and would” reopen negotiations with the European Union on chapters of the accession treaty that needed to be discussed in the national interest. He was referring to agriculture and the shipyards.
Is Alfred Sant digging himself into a hole here? He did not play any part in the accession negotiations because he had blatantly refused to accept membership. Now he wants to rearrange the package.
Although he can of course try to better certain elements, through deadline extensions, but as a spokesman for Agriculture Commissioner Marianne Fisher Boel told Ivan Camilleri, “What is agreed in the Accession Treaty is a done deal... Of course, policy changes happen all the time and Malta has the possibility to influence that process. Sometimes, member states can win some little ‘sweeteners’ in the negotiating process during reform discussions.”
So it is at that stage that a Labour government could make a difference. So why couldn’t Dr Sant just say that instead of slipping on dry ground (in Maltese we say jizloq fin-nixef) and laying himself wide open to losing a battle over terminologies at this crucial stage of the game.
Malta had agreed with direct income support for farmers, followed by a gradual phasing out by 2014 at the latest, restructuring assistance for the processing industry and the removal of levies.
As for the shipyards the Accession Treaty included the prohibition of further restructuring aid after December 31, 2008, and the obligation to implement the restructuring plan.
However, the Accession Treaty authorises the Commission to change certain conditions – in particular the prohibition of aid after December 31 – in exceptional circumstances and after consultations with the other member states.
The Labour Party has important historical links with the shipyards, so it is no surprise that it wants to utilise that tool in an election campaign and is hinging its hopes that it will be able to come up with “exceptional circumstances” and be able to rally support from other member states.
The crux is whether the shipyards can be commercially viable, and so far this has not happened. John Cassar White, who chaired the company through major restructuring, bringing the number of workers down from some 7,600 workers to about 1,750 said on his retirement early last month: “The big issue was the shipyards’ heavy dependency on state aid… It definitely has all the ingredients to be independent: there’s a highly skilled workforce, it has the competitive advantage of being in the centre of the Mediterranean and there’s a global ongoing positive cycle in the ship repair industry. But there is much more to be done, and it will now depend a lot on the productivity and the affinity between management and the workers.”
And it is the workers and their families’ lives that are at stake here.
On Monday, the PM told reporters that although the shipyards have “a serious productivity problem which had cost the country millions of liri” his government had no plans to downsize the shipyards. On the contrary, he believes that “with a genuine effort from everyone we can get the docks back on their feet.”
He said he did not want the Malta Shipyards to close but wanted it to raise its productivity and turn a profit. However, he did not expand on how that could be achieved when the deadline for State aid has to stop in December this year and why his government has not tried to extend the 31 December deadline.

Important information
Do you know what number to call in an emergency, not just here but all over Europe? According to an EC survey, 84 per cent of the Maltese respondents would not know what number to dial if in need of urgent help.
Now according to the Commission we are in line with the directive on the emergency number and all the services are available through the island’s telecom operators, which means that the telecom operators provide location information to the emergency services to get to accident victims as soon as possible.
The only problem seems to be that most people don’t know what number to dial. So here it is – 112, it is easy enough to remember.

Unimportant information
World news sometimes surprises me with its ‘parochialism’. Is this globalisation? Getting locals issues on world news is one thing, but we are even getting local (French in this case) trivia. Do we really care whether Sarkozy sent his ex-wife Cecilia a text message asking her to “come back”? I got this riveting piece of information from BBC World on Monday morning. Maybe a lot of us do care and I am the odd one out here. After all the popular TV and press columns pander to this kind of gossip!

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