The acrimonious budget debate is over, but the fallout continues – thick and fast.

And its provenance is not exclusively the Labour opposition.

When hardened columnists, known for their PN leanings, openly voice their

complaints without pulling any punches, one can get the measure of public feeling on the matter.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was the most outspoken, when she wrote in The Malta Independent on Sunday, 12 December to denounce the indiscriminate price hike on paraffin as “a socially immoral act that I can’t even begin to understand the lack of thinking that went on behind it” and that “so many men in top-level positions don’t know the cost of anything that goes into the running of a household and a family”. That’s quite a mouthful, for those who care about the public feeling that makes needy families seethe with wrath.

Did she have Austin Gatt and the men from his ministry in mind, when she remarked that “clearly, nobody at decision-making level, or in any advisory capacity, bothered to think about the practical effects on ordinary households of the prohibitive pricing of paraffin”?

Government’s Waterloo

Her summing up is concise and has a punch: “It is now impossible for people on a fixed income or low salary to heat their homes by any means, paraffin heaters having hitherto been the only affordable option for them.”

Doubling the price of paraffin in one fell swoop, she wrote: “may yet turn out to be this government’s Waterloo”

The following day, Marisa Micallef Leyson, in her column in The Malta Independent, zeroed in on the same topic, and started her piece by saying: “I know there is a perception that the government may be out of touch with what some people are feeling”. “Some” people and some perception!

She owned up that the paraffin price hike is “the issue of the moment”. Referring to trade union leaders she asked: “How out of touch are they? If they are really serious about protecting people’s livelihood and standard of living, they should have put pressure to bear right away on this kerosene price hike”.

Iniquitous decision

By any standard of social justice, this was the most iniquitous budget decision. However indiscriminate and unmindful of families hovering above or below the poverty line, it is not by any means the only blot that tarnishes the escutcheon of the Gonzi government.

The former Finance Minister, John Dalli, who piloted every Nationalist budget from l992 only to resign after an internal party plot, was more sophisticated in his criticism.

He “drew his own conclusions” in The Sunday Times of 12 December.

Mr Dalli first claimed that: “the previous Nationalist administration, of which he was a very active protagonist”, had moved Malta into adulthood. And he hastened to add that adulthood presupposes the understanding that the individual good can only be enjoyed through the promotion of stability and social cohesion (emphasis added).

Major shortcoming

He hastened to observe that “following the debating and name-calling that characterised the post budget debate, was depressing to say the least”. He highlighted the major shortcoming of the budget speech by saying out loud: “it is worrying that nearly everybody in Malta still thinks that the world owes us a living and that we can continue to improve our quality of life without investing.”

Mr Dalli harped on the urgent need to control government expenditure. And he delivered his punch line in these words: “This is where the action needs to be taken. Please deliver us from the gimmicks.”

He wanted to make sure that his readers would be left in no doubt as to whom he wanted to address. He said this: “We took one step towards productivity, but it was half-hearted. We should remove excessive non-productive time, not play around with it. But this should not be done as a rap on the knuckles of one of the social partners.”

However ingeniously, Mr Dalli may have detached himself from Dr Gonzi’s blinkered approach and its inevitable consequences. He may have deflected from him the slings and arrows coming from party supporters who felt deluded and let down by the Gonzi budget.

He may even have highlighted the damage caused by the immature and precipitate haste, demonstrated by a government in panic, acting under EU orders to draw up and implement a Convergence Plan, thereby laying the blame at Dr Gonzi’s door, where it belongs.

None of this obliterates the root cause of Malta’s (and Dr Gonzi’s) real predicament. Malta’s core problem is its structural deficit and its massive debt – all of which was accumulated, with deliberate intent, by a government inebriated with the money no problem potion from the earlier Fenech Adami years.

During those capricious years, John Dalli and Lawrence Gonzi threw discretion to the wind, and rode the high horse or political power with zest and abandon, while their chosen hirelings had the time of their life on the gravy train, and public finances ran out of control.

It is now too late to call back yesterday. And the Maltese tax-paying electorate will now know the worth of water once the well is dry.

Even so, it is too late to grieve when the chance is past. They have to wait for the next chance to come up, and make sure that the culprits are removed from harm’s way.

I take this opportunity to wish all readers of this column a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. It is best to make the most of it. Next time round, it could be worse!

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