The Nationalist Party has always been exceptionally good at creating the illusion of direction and purpose.
A recent case in point would be the PN general conference of May 2007, when Lawrence Gonzi outlined his political vision to turn Malta into a “Centre for Excellence” by 2015.
This plan had in truth surfaced some weeks before, during the Labour Day meetings with the social partners on 1 May. But for the purposes of the conference, “Vision 2015” was unveiled to the public with a truly stunning multimedia display, placing all the IT “excellence” we associate with the SmartCity project against the backdrop of a carefully airbrushed landscape of Mdina... as if to suggest that, for all its newfound sense of the future, the PN had not lost sight of its own, conservative past.
It was a masterpiece of multi-media propaganda, made all the more believable by the (then) imminent opening of Mater Dei: a new State hospital we were repeatedly told would itself be a benchmark for excellence in public health. Compare this to the Malta Labour Party’s often woeful efforts to project similar future visions of its own, it is easy to see why the Nationalists have enjoyed such overwhelming electoral success over the past two decades.
But man cannot live by bread alone; and by the same token, a political party needs to sooner or later make good on its own projections.
Presenting the budget in Parliament last Monday, Finance Minister Tonio Fenech once again maintained the PN’s consistent reputation for excellence in delivery, striking all the right notes and poses, and exuding the confidence and self-assurance necessary to convince the public that the nation’s finances were in safe hands in these times of economic uncertainty.
But just like the glitz and glamour of the PN’s general conference last May, there was considerably more style than substance in the finer details of Budget 2009: especially when one considers that the government has given itself a seven-year time-frame in which to achieve its ambitious project for a “Centre of Excellence” to begin with.
Claiming that the budget was an exercise in “responsibility, sustainability and solidarity”, Fenech rattled off a list of initiatives and exercises which, under scrutiny, turn out to be little more than revenue generators for government: the ‘eco-contributions’ and fuel price hikes in particular.
On other level, it is difficult to recognise any “responsibility” in the government’s decision to dish out over 600 jobs in the public service over the three months before the last election: sowing the seeds for an unexpected budget imbalance, which would force the government to revise its own target of 2010 as the year when the deficit would be reversed into a surplus.
But the biggest drawback by far is that the government failed to inject the same sense of direction in its budget, as it had successfully imparted to the nation with its spectacular conference in May 2007.
Indeed, what we were treated to last Monday was a series of individual capital outlays allocated to numerous existing sections of the economy, without any clear indication of how this money will be spent; and above all, how the government intends to direct the economy to create the new wealth and prosperity, necessary for the realisation of the selfsame government’s Vision 2015 in the first place.
This much is evident also from the express concerns of the Chamber of Commerce and Enterprise, among other social partners.
“Considering that the Government is embarking on the Vision 2015 to achieve a number of Centres of Excellence, there was no mention of what existing as well as new growth sectors the Government intends to target,” the Chamber noted in its official reaction. “Coupled with this, there is an absence of new access to finance tools, such as micro credits, proof of concept funds and venture financing that go hand-in-hand with such developments, particularly with the noted bio-technology park.”
Elsewhere, economist Edward Scicluna told this newspaper in an interview today that government, for all its grandiose schemes, had so far failed to identify any practical alternatives to the traditional (and ruinous) method of “taxing and spending” to finance its schemes... only to borrow heavily, when taxation is clearly insufficient to meet its own, largely political exigencies.
From this point of view, it would be altogether more expedient for the government to explain in detail how it intends to make good on its promise of turning Malta into a Centre of Excellence in a wide variety of different economic spheres. Otherwise, like the budgetary surplus deadline before it, “Vision 2015” will also have to be postponed... perhaps indefinitely.

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