Editorial | Wednesday, 23 July 2008

Lessons to be learnt

There are many lessons to be learnt from the transport strike which took place last week, leaving in its wake a commercial fall out, irritated commuters and a weakened transport association who have now to live with the consequences of their actions.
The first lesson is that this strike should have never taken place since at no time was there an industrial dispute between the government and the operators of taxis and red minivans. The decision to very hurriedly call a strike following a dispute between the hearse operators and the government on the pretext of defending their rights less the liberalisation process was extended to themselves was ill-thought out and evidence of little thinking going on in the higher echelons of the transport association. Worse still was the violence and bullying tactics engaged in to deprive private operators from rendering a service and even the government from operating an emergency service. These stupid tactics only helped public opinion harden its stand against the strikers who failed to win a significant support at all. This flies in the face of custom whereby all strikers do their best to carry public opinion realising only too well that the voice of the people is the strongest voice in any democracy.
The second lesson to be learnt is that government should never have allowed lawlessness and the blatant breaking of the rule of law for various reasons. It weakened government in the eyes of the citizen and most offensively, it sent a terrible message that government is weak with the strong and strong with the weak. This further fuels negatives perceptions of the police and the armed forces, who in times of tension may be seen as passive bystanders failing in their call of duty, rather than guardians of society. The police lacked any planned strategy to cordon off the prime minister’s office, let alone to allow the free flowing of traffic. The police authorities and the ministry need to knock heads and start getting their act together for the eventuality of future nasty incidents. The arraigning of persons in court is positive, as is the decision of magistrates not to grant bail in the early days of the strike.
A further lesson is that when embarking on radical changes, as is the case in the rent law reform, government should initiate the process with a white paper allowing ideas to crystallize and allowing all protagonists to air their views. This not being the case, the resultant outcome (very much due to the silly actions taken by the federation) is that the process of liberalisation has now been brought forward and is clearly on the political agenda far earlier than government could ever have imagined. Credit goes to the minister for transport who managed to break the mould and to his credit forced the association into a corner, especially after the dispute with the hearse operators was resolved and they abandoned the association. This newspaper now augurs that the process carries on in full earnest - breaking up all cartels monopolies and restrictive practices. As a result, one hopes that services will be better and less expensive as all abuses (including the over charged prices for purchasing of licenses) are gone and buried once and for all. The minister is now clearly in the driving seat, and he needs to carry on with little care for the wet elements in the cabinet that clearly provoked his masterstroke threat to resign if the liberalisation process was abandoned by government.
The underlining message from these incidents must now lead to a cultural change, which all players must understand. We need this change along with the appreciation that by being members of the European Union, we are also subscribing to a European way of doing things where dialogue, consultation, white papers and public involvement are all par with the European course. Also in this spirit, bullying tactics are never condoned but rather lead to the loss of public support. Winning the day is now on the basis of strong argument and not violence.
The fall out of these illegal strikes are immense and the federation will have a lot of bridge building to do. It may also have to compensate operators who, without any fault on their part, found themselves losing custom and earnings.
The way forward now is to simply carry on breaking up all restrictive practices and in this, government will find the full support of users and customers who are offended by bad service and high prices. A sea change is required whereby the user is put at the centre of business, where buses run at times and hours and via routes convenient to the consumer and not to the bus owner. Government must place the citizen first in protecting his right to be given good service and offering emergency services when ever necessary. Hopefully with the unruly events of last week behind us a new leaf will be turned in the transport book. Hopefully users will now be given the attention they deserve. After all, without users, bus drivers would have little reason to exist.