Seven steps to a miracle

The Labour Party has yet to make the transition from back-seat driver to Opposition, even though it has had 20 years of practice since 1987. The feeling I get when reading its suggestions to the government on how to do things better is of watching a long-married couple in a car, with the husband driving and the woman whining “Iva mhux hekk, Joe. Kieku jien ma kontx nghaddi minn hawn. Ar’hemm, hemm hofra. Ara dak it-tifel, kwazi tajjartu!”

The Opposition nags, rather than making constructive suggestions, and it has credibility issues which don’t help matters. People don’t think that everything is fabulous and that things are clicking along just fine. But then we aren’t exactly galvanised with enthusiasm, hope and excitement when those who are standing in line to run the show make vague sounds in the background, rather than spelling out what should be done and how.

Labour lost the election almost 11 months ago. Then it took a three-month sabbatical to lick its wounds, engage in a spot of internecine warfare, gaze at its navel and involve the entire country in the tortuous and tortured election of a new leader. Eight months have gone by since then and Labour has done nothing. Yes, that’s right: nothing. First there was the excitement of having a new leader, then the long, hot summer, then more self-involved thrills as the new leader was sworn in as Leader of the Opposition, then a bit of posturing around Budget Day, then the usual round of seasonal parties, and now here we are, almost at the end of January, still empty-handed and waiting for the new Labour leader to do something other than preen his feathers. The waiting is killing me.

Yesterday, with no excuses left for procrastination or displacement activity, Labour gave itself a gentle prod in the rear and squawked out ‘seven measures’ to tackle the problem of hospital waiting-lists. Never ones to miss a marketing trick (even if the marketing trick misses its target), the Labour Party is using that old numbers game most memorably and successfully deployed by God with his 10 commandments and Alcoholics Anonymous with its 12-step programme. So it hasn’t put forward suggestions for improving the system. No. It’s come up with Seven Measures to tackle the problem.

When Labour opts for marketing tricks it misses one trick or several and undermines its own game – like in the last electoral campaign when somebody forgot to fit the ballerina to the display-pillar so that all you saw when approaching was a disjointed arm spookily edging its way round the other side. In this case, the party’s marketing gurus haven’t informed the policy wonks that successful numbers games in communication rely on even numbers not odd, again as most memorably and successfully illustrated by God and Alcoholics Anonymous.

Odd numbers, especially seven, are used to capture the public imagination with negative connotations, as in the Dance of the Seven Veils. It isn’t a coincidence that there are seven deadly sins but six beatitudes. Odd numbers, usually three, are also used for comic effect, as with the Three Stooges and the Three Little Pigs (and by Enid Blyton with her Famous Five). Labour should have gone for Six Steps even if it meant that Anthony Zammit threw a tantrum because one of his suggestions had to be deleted.

Anthony Zammit and Michael Farrugia addressed the press together, giving a taste of what is to come when Labour wins the election in 2013 and they jostle for the cabinet post of health minister. I can just imagine that Farrugia isn’t looking too kindly on being displaced by somebody who shot to fame out of nowhere on the strength of saving the former leader on the operating-table. Meanwhile, that interview which Zammit gave to The Times, vividly describing how he was tied up and robbed while somebody wearing size 38 shoes stood on his throat, appears to have fallen into a vacuum. Do the police have any leads, has Zammit withdrawn his accusations, or has a decision been taken to draw a discreet veil over the matter? Given the fuss he made at the time, calling in the press and giving interviews and so on, while his party released statements of solidarity, I think we should be told. It’s only decent to show his public that scant consideration after worrying them to bits about his plight.

So what are these magic Seven Steps that will put things right? I don’t know about you, but I think Zammit and Farrugia jotted them down in Seven Minutes on a prescription pad in between doing their duty and knocking names off those hospital waiting-lists. Here they are. 1. Introduce better hospital management. 2. Make greater use of operating theatres. 3. Forge a partnership with hospital employees so that they may work after hours on greater numbers of operations. 4. Increase the number of consultants and specialists, and ‘task’ (please, no, no, no) some of them to operate on patients who are on the centralised waiting-list. 5. Sub-contract a proportion of the pending operations to private hospitals, because Mater Dei has 100 beds fewer than St Luke’s did. 6. Give all those on the waiting-list a timeframe during which their operation will be carried out. 7. Perform a medical audit and ensure that all patients have the right follow-up care.

Now tell me, is there anything there that you couldn’t have come up with yourself over a cup of tea while watching Eastenders? We all know what needs to be done. Even the government, I would imagine, knows what needs to be done. The problems lie not in what to do but in how to do it. It’s easy to jot down Seven Steps to a Miraculous Cure on the back of a prescription pad. It’s not so easy to devise or implement One Thousand and Seven Steps to actually making it happen in the face of union directives, entrenched working methods, a civil service mentality and Zammit’s and Farrugia’s colleagues protecting their patches and putting spokes in the wheels every step of the way.

There’s another point, too. The usual wisdom is to set a thief to catch a thief. The exception is when you’re reforming a system fraught with workplace politics, pique, resentment, competition and colleagues vying with each other for recognition, promotion and better pay. In that situation, you don’t take two individuals out of the system and get them to reform it, which involves telling their colleagues what to do and how to do it. I can just imagine the reaction in the canteen as Zammit’s and Farrugia’s hospital colleagues send them up in a hot-air balloon behind their backs. That’s not a solution but One Step to Disaster.

This article is published in The Malta Independent today.