Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/806571
Opinion 25 maltatoday, SUNDAY, 2 APRIL 2017 years equating 'EU accession' with 'instant Armageddon', now takes the credit for an economic turn-around that is itself largely the result of Malta's EU membership. Hard to imagine a more completely off-target prediction than that, really. In fact, the only serious contender I can think of is Busuttil's 'bail-out' blooper. Makes you wonder how anyone with any sense at all would ever trust the foresight of two men who somehow managed to get things so utterly, hopelessly and irretrievably wrong. And you don't even need the benefit of hindsight in either case, by the way: the failure of those predictions was itself easily predictable at the time they were made. Both were classic examples of politicians telling us things we could all see were just, ultimately, wishful thinking. Anyone basing their own predictions on real, existing economic indicators would (and many did) have foretold the opposite on both occasions. So my general advice to Busuttil and Muscat would be: stick to the day-job for now, and leave the business of looking into the seeds of time to the people who can actually read them. (That is to say, nobody, in any literal sense). Otherwise, I predict they will both end up looking more foolish than they already look today. If that will even be at all possible in a future no one can predict.... x