 01-07 November 2000 |
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 Missing the wood for the trees Why Tony Zarb should resign Newspapers and the media have not had enough time to digest the extent of the General Workers’ Union petition fraud. Yes, this is fraud and nothing else and in a normal democracy, the leaders who championed such a petition would have little or no alternative but to resign. Yes, resign and we emphasise this. When our sister publication MaltaToday revealed the fraudulent nature of the petition before the counting and checking commenced, there was silence on the part of the GWU – rather strange – more so when the GWU is renowned for its trigger happy nature of replying to things. But instead of calling for the resignation of the GWU leaders or for some kind of accountability one read the most elastic of arguments – namely in Tuesday’s editorial in The Malta Independent that we should be concerned at the speed at which the petition signatures were analysed. As is the norm with editorials in The Malta Independent the author continues to prove his paranoid fixation (hence the title of Big brother for an editorial dealing purely with the government’s resolve in tracking down the true veracity of the petition). But such editorials confirm that we are missing the wood for the trees. Perhaps the editor of The Malta Independent is unaware of databases of electoral registers, a commodity available to most marketing, media and political entities. The petition was supposed to be the foundation of the strength of the union’s actions, the result was a fiasco. Not only were individuals created and scribbles added to the inflated 78,000 figure, but some bona fide names were put down without the consent of the individual indicated. This is very serious and what the media should be asking is whether this union should be taken seriously in the first place. And this is beyond the agenda and personal convictions of any of the editorialists and newspaper monitors. There is only one answer for the GWU: as when the union played foul in the August of 1999, the union section leader, Ronnie Pellegrini, who organised the ruckus, resigned. Will Mr Zarb suffer the same fate? Hardly likely, but then he will have to face a constant reminder of the fraud and numbers game. 
The Expo comes to a closeThe Expo experience was worthwhile because Malta has many interests in Germany. In all, just under 20 million visitors visited the Expo against the 40 million expected. On a one to 10, Malta’s stand measured six. It was an attractive design but it lacked consideration for space within. Just under 1.1 million visitors visited the Malta stand and of the Lm1 million, Lm400,000 seems to have been spent on the stand whereas the rest was spent on other running expenses linked to the pavilion. The next Expo will take place in Japan, and there, Malta’s participation will be important – but one should begin considering from this point in time what we want to achieve and with whom in Japan. The Japanese Expo will attract Japanese visitors and a small, but sizable number of Asian visitors. Malta’s presence there is a must – but we must learn from the experience of the Hanover Maltese pavilion and move on. God forbid if we had to take Mr Zarb’s advice and stay away from Expo. | ||||||
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