Whether elections will have been called, by now is a matter of conjecture, although this is most unlikely given news of fresh bad poll ratings within PN circles. No wonder the PM dropped an indirect hint about the postponement of an early poll last Friday in Parliament.

But nothing can deny the fact that this government is living in a state of denial; far more than they accuse the Drydocks workers and the hunters of doing.

Lawrence Gonzi has been progressively showing that he could not see the glaring political reality confronting him in Malta. The PN is simply misreading the island’s political mood.

With his flip-flop approach on various issues – even regarding his indecisiveness about which districts he will be running for – Lawrence Gonzi has not only unleashed forces that not even he can control, but he has reduced Malta to a casualty of the long festering electoral battle.

Whenever it happens, the next election will be the battle for the soul of Malta, although we pledge to make it a calm affair to be followed by a smooth transition.

His or his government’s recent media interventions have proved to be an embarrassment.

One moment ‘Mr Strong Pair of Hands’ was quoted on The Sunday Times front page as having reprimanded Austin Gatt over his tasteless attack on Alfred Sant during the PN general council. The next we were told on the inside pages that he had merely talked to him about the matter.

The same goes for the famous e-mail of praise to the PM about the budget from opposition members. Given that we have a government that specialises in a quick fire response to everything that is said or written, including the Opposition Leader’s Sunday political speeches, how come it took a prompt collectively signed denial by Labour’s parliamentary group for Dr Gonzi’s media acolytes to state that he was incorrectly reported by the STOM? No doubt Dr Gonzi must have been hoping that there would have been no denial from our side to let the spin take its full natural course.

More or less at the same time, we had the claim by Parliamentary Secretary Tonio Fenech that the government could stand to benefit by assuming some of the Central Bank’s reserves after 1 January, only to have the Central Bank itself dismiss his hollow claim about a Lm6m per annum government gain in savings on public debt interest.

Things reached their nadir when, as a result of his finding himself lost for words, Minister Gatt implied that it was too much of a coincidence that one of three ISP’s that had filed an EU complaint over SmartCity, included a company that is reported to have done some professional work for the MLP. What he failed to mention was that one of the companies – Keyworld, is run by none other than a recently appointed government Ambassador for Turkey. What was even worse was that we were then told that the issue raised by three local ISP’s happened to have come from ISP’s that had all hosted MLP and GWU websites.

This is a below the belt reaction by the Nationalist Party, who seem flabbergasted that Labour has taken the wind out of their sails over SmartCity by pledging to support it, and even by naturally being the likely government to implement it in the next few years if contractual datelines are kept.

I was not in the least surprised that certain media tried to gate-keep certain issues I raised in Parliament during my interventions on foreign affairs and IT.

On foreign affairs most of them missed the most important point. That while this government is going on and on about the need for consensus in foreign affairs, the minister concerned has repeatedly failed to give a public undertaking that if there had to be a change in government a PN opposition would honour its commitment towards a consensual approach to foreign affairs under a new Labour government.

On IT these are some of the points that have been deliberately ignored by certain media. Primarily, that:

• although Minister Gatt is trying to give the impression that Labour is only supporting SmartCity half-heartedly, readers should know that just before the signing of the agreement with Tecom he had introduced me to the foreign investors as the main spokesperson of an opposition which had been instrumental in garnering unanimous parliamentary approval for the project.

• The minister continued to turn down my repeated requests in the name of transparency for a complete list of multimillion lira tenders adjudicated or evaluated by boards on which his head of Secretariat sat, preferring instead to refer the case to the Commission Against Corruption as a diversionary tactic.

•In spite of the government’s boasting about the IT sector, Eurostat had recently revealed that as a result of a study on youths in 25 EU member states – (published in the first half of this year) – it was found that as far as 16-24 year olds who used the internet at least once a month are concerned, Malta had the lowest showing with 40 per cent against the European average of 73 per cent.

• The same applied to those youths of the same age bracket who happened to have high computer skills. While Malta’s figure stood at a mere 23 per cent, the EU average was of 39 per cent.

• My challenge to the minister to reveal how many national IT strategy targets for 2004-2006 had been achieved before launching a perfectly election-timed 2007-2010 national strategy, seems to have been ignored so far.

• My ignored remark that when Capgemini benchmarked certain government services, particularly in the e-ID and licensing and testing department areas, some of the services were not even live when the benchmarking took place. This could have implied that the minister was not only trying to take the Maltese for a ride, but also the European Union itself!

• No explanation was given as to how a new Patient Administration System in the Mater Dei IT set-up was described as state of the art, at a time when the social security people were trying to discard a similar system as old hat.

• No replies were given as to whether there really was a Schengen process IT tender or not. I said so because, while the Deputy Prime Minister had stated that such a tender did not exist, I quoted MITTS as not only having issued such a tender but raised the point that MITTS had been ordered to come up with a temporary system and stopped the tendering process. All this without the Maltese people being told why the recommended bidder had been refused.

• No information was given as to why the introduction of new PCs in government departments did not feature in the Budget 08, when it was one of the main components of the controversial IT leasing tender.

• There was a similar deafening silence as to whether a Times business correspondent was right or wrong in claiming that a single bidder for a multimillion lira tender for IT at Enemalta and WSC could have led to inflated quotations.

• The government was equally lost for words as to my allegation that the Customs IT tender had been so mishandled that the government risks losing some EUR2m in EU funds for this project.

Meanwhile, on the home front we continue to find ourselves in a situation where deciphering Dr Gonzi has become a frustrating game, not for us politicians but even for discerning voters; where ministers ‘on notice’ publicly applaud the PM but some are reported to privately admit that they could be on the PM’s hit list – particularly since they feel that some young Turks are being groomed to replace them.

I have nothing against a mix of seasoned and experienced politicians and energetic young candidates of promise, but Nationalist propagandist Eddie Aquilina did not leave much to the imagination when he unwittingly revealed what could be the true Nationalist ball-game.

Primarily, that hopefully, Lawrence Gonzi should get a new and younger team. And that is what we (ie Nationalist voters) should be really thinking about… making sure that we get serious new guys elected.

A more clear cut and categoric condemnation of today’s serving ministers could not have been made – not even by the spin doctors at CNL!

e-mail: [email protected]

Leo Brincat is the opposition spokesman for Foreign Affairs and IT