Any moment now, and he’s going to make himself forget that he voted for them
Martin Scicluna, 3 March 2013, writing in The Malta Independent on Sunday: “Time for a change to Labour”.
Martin Scicluna, 10 May 2013, quoted in The Times: (on the subject of ‘political will’ re the environment) “It was characterised by a lack of enforcement resources and too great a willingness to turn a blind eye to powerful lobby groups, such as bird hunters, boathouse owners and the construction industry, for fear of losing their votes.”
(…)
Environment lovers would be watching the Labour government carefully, he said, “possibly with some trepidation”.
“Plans for Gozo and Ħondoq ir-Rummien. Plans to split environment and the planning roles. Plans for land reclamation. A feeling perhaps that promises have been made to the development lobby which have yet to be cashed in. Plans for changes in processing applications by the planning authority. We must be vigilant,” Mr Scicluna said.
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And Mr. Scicluna did not mention how the Labour government will be looking for “technical loopholes” in the EU directives, and how it appears set to take shortcuts on compliance with EU laws on the Delimara development – which is still in the expression of interest phase.
Tsk tsk. Wrong choice of word. It’s not trepidation, but mortification.
Trepified mortification?
Martin, you can be as vigilant as much as you like but the PL will do as they please and their track record will be ten time worse than that of the PN in government.
I hope Mr. Scicluna will not be the dissenting voice of Din l-Art Helwa when a project with environmental ramifications are discussed.
I’m sick and tired of hearing how hard the PL will find it to govern Malta well and how bad their track record will be.
Let’s get one thing straight – Malta is not difficult to govern well. That the PN found it so hard to govern and in fact did only a mediocre job of it is due to their fear of losing power.
This in turn led to unsustainable largesse with the taxpayers’ money – unsustainable pensions, education and health system and a policy of appeasement towards backstabbing self-seekers using the party for their own selfish purposes.
The PL will in turn do a bad job because it owes so many favours that everyone and his dog will be taking the opportunity to siphon off as much as possible whilst the going is good.
We already have a bloated cabinet supported by wives, cousins, daughters and various hangers-on as civil servants and consultants.
So the bottom line is Malta will continue to be a nation of working poor, with a beleaguered middle class supporting a lazy civil service/administration inflated for political reasons and the many scroungers the PL attracts so successfully.
But I repeat: Malta is not difficult to govern well, especially with EU funds being thrown at us like confetti.
The problem is that no party has ever really had the willpower to do it.
We poured billions down the drain to artificially prolong the life of the Drydocks and hundreds of millions more to keep Air Malta flying long after the liberalization of aviation made its grossly inflated staff complement a huge burden on the taxpayer.
There are many other examples of terrible management of the country, by both parties, especially the PL.
But I insist – Malta isn’t, or more correctly, shouldn’t be, difficult to govern at all.
You and I need to have a long chat over cocktails. Then we can write the Economic Liberals’ Manifesto For Malta.
@H.P. Baxxter
It’d be my pleasure, H.P.
I suggest the first commitment in the manifesto will be to reduce parliament to 51 members.
You should get in touch with Ray Bugeja. He’d understand, or I’m mistaken.
Ah, the crux: “promises have been made to the development lobby which have yet to be cashed in”
Join the sell-out club.A bunch of money and limelight grabbing opportunists, political cowards and narrow minded social climbers.
How sad.
I think that Martin Scicluna should be reminded that when one is in a hole one should stop digging
Well at least he`s one of the first to come round and question Labour`s lies.
Last March there were at least 18,000 switchers. These voted Labour for one reason or another. They are by no means PL “suldati tal-azzar”.
Similar to Maertin Scicluna’s denial, in a video interview today, Alfred Sant said that the MLP was never against Malta’s EU membership.
I guess that in a few years, they will add one more spin and spread the propoganda that the PN actually campaigned against the EU and thanks to the MLP, we joined the EU. Given the level of sophistication of the Maltese electorate, people will actually believe this kind of crap.
In his youth, Alfred Sant was the lead singer of Whitesnake. It’s true. I read it in Dominic Fenech’s book.