Truth about the Public Private Partnership, or rather President (Nasheed) Providing for Party (MDP Activists) - atollreview

Today, it is rather sad and pathetic to hear the dialogue of Mr Nasheed aka President and speaking to the public about the key policy changes in the country. Unfortunately, his thinking also changes like a 24 hour news bulletins.

First, it was punishing Mr. Gayyoom and his associates that became the number one priority for the Nasheed’s regime. Second it was all about the provincial system and then came the Public Private Partnership (PPPs) for the nations rescue and more recently, it’s all about the Civil Servants. Apparently, Mr. Nasheed cannot sleep these days because there are more civil servants than his own political appointees. The majority of the public chose Anni (Nasheed) over the former President for a change and people still stand for their ‘wise’ decision. However, it seems to people that Anni is either losing his mind or he is getting really bad advice.

Occasionally, people make statements that they think are just cool. For instance, we find President’s advisors like Foreign Minister Shaheed telling us that foreign investors are now looking at Maldives quite differently (positively) since the change in government. Is there a basis for this? Or else, is this just a theory based on lots of confusing messages President receives from his so called advisors? Ironically, every idea that comes to Anni’s table is new and exciting because he has heard about the idea for the first time. With such unrealistic emotions he goes on TV and National Radio promoting his ideas and enlightening to the public he has “the solution” to every individual problems in the Maldives, while majority of Maldivian thinking, ‘what is going on Mr. President?’ In fact, people have tried your ideas already with total failure or limited success. Mr Nasheed maybe a good journalist or an activist, but definitely, he is yet to show to the public that he can govern this small nation as he promised during his campaign.

To prove our point we will take one of the Nasheed’s core policies, his hymn to the virtues of Public Private Partnerships [PPPs], and their alleged superiority to government investment in key sectors such as health, education and transport. He has used every opportunity and resources to convince to the public his innovative philosophy. “We see models of successful PPPs all around the world. We are sure PPPs will bring much-needed self control to government expenditure…let’s open all the government run services to private parties…” Nasheed says.

When we heard about this first time, we thought, surely, this has to be a joke especially in the wake of the global failure of private sector capitalism. Mr.Nasheed often takes STO and STELCO as examples of failure in government investment, and the need for these sectors to be converted into private or PPPs. We would like to remind to the President that even though he is new to the PPPs, majority of the Maldivians are not, we do remember private sector’s so called ‘commercial discipline’ running Air Maldives into bankruptcy. Further, we can give failed examples from western countries - go check various OECD reports to find failed PPP transport projects in countries such as Britain and Australia, and disastrous consequences of PPPs in New Zealand.

We know many claim that private industry is intrinsically more efficient than government? Mr. President, this is not Thatcher’s era, what planet have you and your advisors been living on for the past decade? Mr. President this is also not the Reagan’s era where Big or small government was in question! Today, we need effective government, that’s all, ‘no bullshit’; just effectiveness is the key in providing public and semi-public goods. Private industry is not the savior.

Private sector is only efficient when they can make huge profits at the expense of the taxpayers and the citizens. For instance, take tourism industry in the Maldives. It is very efficient because all these years and even today they make huge profits and pay almost nothing in taxes to this country - Sonevafushi paying only $8 for $15000 bed, or Kurubaa Village paying annually $30 for the island rent till 2000, is simply business running at the expense of Maldivians blood. Now let’s look at what happens when resort owners were really asked to make a contribution to the society by forming so called PPPs via MTDC. Every body knows the situation MTDC is in, within the first year Auditor General has called for liquidation of the company.

Today we hear, PPPs in utility companies and transport system, and we do agree that this is a really good idea to get the job opportunities for activists of the Nasheed’s regime without any qualifications or guidelines. If people do not believe this reality they need to listen to the news carefully in each month - boards of directors in dozens with huge salaries are being selected for each of these PPPs.

We are worried about the regime’s continuous effort in outsourcing education, health and transport, because the effectiveness of PPPs depend on the contract on which it is based, as seen by the MTDC case. There are global cases such as the case in Victoria where the government outsourced services to the PPPs and failed to ensure the contractors were held to account for cost over runs and debt financing, eventually when they failed, Politian’s have an incentives to bail them out with taxpayers’ expense. Further, we have seen similar cases in US in the recent times.

Frankly, we are worried about the President’s idea of subsidizing business for their services. In other words, if government is going to subsidize private sector in the name of PPPs to build schools and hospitals it is time for us to stop all this rubbish about efficient and effective PPPs but label them what it stands for rather providing business avenues to his Party (MDP) members.

Now, we know what a hard core MDP supporter will say, let’s all blame Maumoon and believe in everything Anni says but we strongly disagree, we should all say no to the bogus policies Nasheed presents and represent.