The election campaign is rapidly gathering momentum. The electorate has been exposed to a whirlwind of political speeches, and the print media, in particular, is beginning to breathe down its neck.
There is something distinctly surreal in all this.
The electorate has not, as yet, any electoral manifesto to consider. The whirlwind consists of hot air!
Advocates of the ruling Nationalist Party speak of a “vision for 2015”. The PN leader and Prime Minister claims to have performed “miracles” since he assumed the leadership of his party, and that his performance is “bearing fruit”. The Opposition Labour Party keeps its powder dry, while it snipes at the government.
The audience has its feet on the ground. It has plenty to worry about, and it urgently needs enlightenment as to how it could be delivered from its present predicament.
The government is not responding. It looks at the 2015 horizon, purring with anticipation, and oblivious of the present and the recent past.
In the electoral arena, the impression is fast gaining ground that this doesn’t add up. For want of a better description, it amounts to Cloud Nine politics.
Tribulations
During the past four years, the main body of the electorate, Nationalists, Labourites and other political denominations, languished under the weight of taxation and rising living costs.
Earning power has been eroded. Instead of providing an adequate measure of compensatory relief, the government kept on spending beyond its revenue, and a significant part of this overspending was money down the drain, eg budget overruns due to incompetent planning.
Higher taxation had an adverse effect on Malta’s competitivity. It is true that the financial sector recorded significant gains, but the benefits accruing from that did not trickle down to yield some multiplier effect.
The situation was aggravated by manifestations of incompetence and proved evidence of corruption.
On the one hand there are the hitherto unresolved stories of reported corrupt practices within the Transport Authority, the Maritime Authority, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry for Gozo, and the bizarre story of malpractices in The Voice of the Mediterranean. On the other, many questions remain unanswered with regard to major projects such as Mater Dei Hospital, the Manwel Dimech Bridge, and the fudged project to lay out a new paved surface for Merchants Street in Valletta.
Top-most consideration
There is of course more to be considered. Some of Malta ailments spring from the proliferation of quangos, staffed by blue-eyed boys, and consultants, paid good money to produce sub-standard reports. Most of them could have been dispensed with, if the bureaucracy was up to the mark and equal to its challenge.
All of the above has to do with the here and now. It has to do with the ingrained public perception that the government has been unequal to its task, and that it has short-changed the electorate when the electorate was promised a “New Spring” and a new style of government.
This perception is hardening into a conviction.
The electorate is not in the mood to “put its trust in princes” – political or otherwise. It has learned from experience. Its prime interest is in survival. Its top consideration is to make sure that its affairs are in safe hands, so that the economy could pick up and finds its feet in short order.
The year 2015 comes much later!
Come the next election, the electorate aspires to a can-do administration, capable of taking the bull by the horns, and focused on healing Malta’s festering economic and administrative sores
Cloud Nine has no silver timing. It has beclouded Malta’s fair sky long enough, depriving the electorate of the sunshine that was forecast.
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