If I read Perit Michael Falzon’s opinion correctly (There but for the grace of Zeus, 9 May), he makes a comparison between the bankruptcies of the country of Greece with the policy of Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici in the months before the election of 1987 in employing people with the government.
Apart from the fact that his is repeating the same misleading comparison of this PN Government when it is currently comparing the so called advantages of the new power station extension with the one in Marsa, built over half a century ago, for one has to compare like-with-like to obtain any sense of balance, the truth is, if Perit Falzon wants to be objective, that the PN government is as spendthrift as the Greek government is and perhaps even more if calculations are made per capita.
The truth is that our PN government has turned a favourable balance in the national coffers left to him by the KMB government into millions of euros of public debt. It baffles me how PN apologists like Falzon turn an argument upside down to suit their political misguidance!
If Falzon cares to reflect just on the period he has been Chairman of Water Services Corporation and compare how a group of third-grade, poorly-paid clerks under a Labour government working with a two-penny calculator managed to collect water and electricity dues without fail every quarter, in contrast with a Water Services Corporation equipped with an open account, and enjoying all the perks, and Falzon knows exactly what I mean, strengthened by the additional hundreds of employees to the already available workforce, would not even manage to issue correct bills on time. This is what makes a country go bankrupt.
Before Falzon can blame the Labour Party for policies followed by a Greek conservative government that rendered its country bankrupt, he should try to recollect how thousands of euros of public money were wasted in trying to rescue a billing software from France that should have led to better efficiency in billing but never did. Falzon should reflect whether that had been because of the blue-eyed boys and girls at Water Services Corporation who earned hefty salaries (and perks) without delivering anything positive in return. This is what turns a country bankrupt.
It is a pity that we have a weak opposition. Because of this we are all losers. A better position would work overtime to list down all the so called policies and projects which ended up as public burdens. There are hundreds of them. There are other considerations that Falzon can reflect upon to render his article more objective. Topics to reflect on could be: the uncontrolled profits of banks and property businesses that have left the common man in the country much poorer than the times KBM was combating political turmoil caused partly by his incompetent administration and not much less by the political party in opposition which provoked violence and then played the victim. A more effective opposition would hold individuals to account, since our ruling party has no interest to clean up the mess, knowing very well that if the worse comes to the worse there is always the common man in the street to make good for mismanagement with his taxation.
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