It is incredible how unsubstantiated political myths metamorphose into sacred truth in this country.
For example, the writer of the leader of this newspaper last Sunday insisted that Mintoff and Mifsud Bonnici left a financial surplus ‘as also witnessed by history’. History does no such thing. History shows that as soon as the income from the renting of the military base ended in 1979, Labour governments at first struggled to avoid budget unbalances and then gave up completely. Even so, this was done at the expense of a crumbling infrastructure that was abandoned by Labour in government through lack of investment in energy and water production, in telecommunications in the road network and in other areas.
The myth owns its origin to the level of Malta’s external reserves about which Labour propagandists used to blow their trumpet so much. In fact these reserves have since increased substantially, albeit they have nothing to do with the ever-increasing government deficit.
By the time the Mifsud Bonnici administration was replaced by the first Eddie Fenech government in May 1987 there was definitely a deficit in the consolidated fund, not a surplus. And KMB’s pre-electoral antics – employing some 8,000 in the public sector and embarking on numerous ‘special projects’ – made sure that no surplus was possible in the government’s books.
In the long electoral campaign of 1987 – spanning mid-February to mid-May – over 8,000 people were employed in the public sector, 2,222 of whom were irregularly employed. Some of them were ‘recruited’ by Kalaxlokk on the Friday that was the eve of the day the country went to the polls and started working on the Monday after the change of government! Talk of blatant abuse of ‘caretaker’ power!
I do not know whether KMB’s 8,000 public sector job spree in 1987 has inspired the myth that the present administration recruited a large number of employees in the public sector as part of its electoral ‘favours’ (pjaċiri) campaign. But the allegation that there was yet another – though much smaller – such spree before the last election has the traits of the embryo of yet another political myth.
The truth is that employment in the public sector is going down steadily and in the year to June, the government shed 600 full-time jobs, from 42,608 in June 2007 to 42,020 last June. The latest figures published last week by the NSO show that from June 2007 to June 2008, government was shedding jobs in almost all its areas of employment except in the health sector which showed an increase of 427 employees. This fact goes on to show that the reduction of jobs in other sectors was even bigger that is apparent at first glance.
Moreover I can’t imagine how the employment of qualified therapists, nurses, midwives and other medical staff can be depicted as some capricious move to obtain votes for the incumbent party in power.
Naturally, in the last twelve months government was still filling posts that were vacant as a result of retirements and resignations. With a workforce of 42,000, a minimum of 1,000 public sector workers retire every year – most probably more because of the ballooning of the public sector in the 1970s. But government was certainly not employing as many people as it was shedding from its employment and that is why the figures show a net drop of 600 in the public sector complement in the year to June this year.
This is very significant. In the middle of the year to June, we had an electoral campaign and an election. Despite the accusations that the government was recklessly engaging people in new employment, the hard fact is that the number of people government was employing did not even match the number of people who left their jobs in the public sector.
The drop in public sector employment has been very consistent in the last few years. The same figures published last week show that in 2002, the public sector used to employ 48,000 people. That went down by 2,300 in the three years to 2005 and by another 2,500 in the three years since.
Public sector employment as a percentage of total full time employment went down from 35% in 2002 to 33% three years later, 30% in June 2007 and 29% now. When you compare this to the 45% the public sector used to employ in 1987, it shows how far Malta has come in having a dynamic private sector creating productive jobs. Thanks to these efforts, government is becoming leaner and more focussed in its mission, leaving the private sector to do what it does best.
The accusation that Government went on a job handing-out spree on the eve of the elections last March is not borne out by the facts when these are seen in the whole context of public sector employment rather than considering selectively figures of new employees. Yet a myth has now been born, and – as usual – the PN has proved inept at attempting to nip it in the bud.
On the horizon I also see the conception of yet another myth: linking the discharges from some factories as well as others having to resort to reduced hours with the new water and electricity tariffs. It is obvious that these setbacks were the direct result of a decrease of consumer demand expected overseas as a result of the credit crunch crisis that the world economy is experiencing. Yet murmurs about their being the result of the hike in water and electricity tariffs can already be discerned in the labour press and in other mutterings of the labour party propaganda machine.
I am not saying that this hike in tariffs will not have a negative effect on employment in the private sector, but it is absolute balderdash to attribute to the tariff issue the bad news we have had recently in the case of a small number of factories.
I am, of course, writing before the public protest organised by the MLP on the day that this article will be published, but I have no doubt that the unjustified link with the water and electricity tariffs will be strengthened and stressed during this protest.
The PN propaganda machinery might be more subtle and clever than its opposite number in the MLP. But when it comes to creating unfounded political myths, nothing beats Labour.

micfal@maltanet.net

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