Democracy is undermined by people not knowing how things work (1)

Celebrating as he impales Malta on a power station it doesn’t need.

Malta’s biggest tragedy (there are a few) is that most people here don’t know how things work or what they mean.

No, not even those people who have had the privilege of a fairly good education.

Everything is new, everything is a mystery, everything has to be explained and then the explanations are called ‘a matter of opinion’ when what they are is actually a matter of fact.

The government stands as guarantor (to a limit of €88 million) for a private company’s bank loan of €101 million, and it is amply clear from the comments in the press, on the internet and in general that people can’t distinguish between a bank loan, a bank guarantee and standing as guarantor for somebody else’s loan.

I suspect the only people who know what it means, other than those with a professional or business interest, are the parents who have lost their homes through judicial auction (bejh bis-subbasta) because they stood as guarantor for their sons’ business loans.

What it means is that if Electrogas Malta does not repay the bank the money it borrows, plus interest, then the bank will turn to the government and collect any amount due by Electrogas Malta (up to €88 million) in tax money or public property.

In other words, public property and the taxes of ordinary people will be used to pay a private company’s bank loan. The government may even have to issue bonds to help it pay the private company’s debt. So much fuss was made because the government paid €3.5 million of Café Premier’s debts. Now it has exposed itself to pay €88 million of Electrogas Malta’s debts and people are silent because they don’t know what it means.

And the Nationalist Party hasn’t come out with a campaign that says:

IFALLU L-ELECTROGAS. THALLAS INT.
€88 MILJUN.

If the Nationalist Party were the Labour Party, it would have got straight down to brass tacks, like this:

TRID THALLAS ID-DJUN TA’ GASAN U TUMAS?
M’GHANDEKX GHAZLA.
€88 MILJUN.

High-falutin’ explanations on the party’s radio station don’t work.

The government has been able to get away with this, and worse, to refuse the press’s Freedom of Information requests with an explanation that publishing the details of its guarantor agreement will cause panic and leave it unable to manage the economy, because people do not understand that the government has committed itself to pay €88 million of a private company’s €101 million bank loan if the private company defaults or goes bankrupt.

In more evolved democracies than this one, where people understand what this means and connect it directly to abuse and an infringement of their rights, there would be a riot – and outrage in the media.

Why should ordinary Maltese people have to pay an €88 million debt, or any part thereof, owed by Siemens, the state of Azerbaijan and the Maltese shareholders who will no doubt have protected, with a firewall, their own extensive private property and holdings?