Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi is fast approaching the end of his first full year in office, both as Prime Minister and Leader of the Nationalist Party. In many ways, he has had an uphill climb.

He became Prime Minister not by popular election, but by succeeding his party predecessor, who made way for him. He did not have wide Cabinet experience. He was appointed to the Cabinet for the first time in l998 and until Dr Fenech Adami abruptly gave up the Premiership, his ministerial experience was confined to the Social Policy Ministry. When he became Prime Minister, he found himself in the deep end, at a time when all the chickens were coming home to roost.

Disenchantment

The Fenech Adami administration had been deliberately pursuing a consistent “money no problem” spending programme, leading to a structural deficit and mountainous debt. In so doing, it flew in the face of the Maastricht criteria. This situation immediately became the EU’s number one worry when Malta formally acceded to the European Union. The first unpleasant chore forced on Prime Minister Gonzi was to draw up a convergence programme. This triggered an on-going series of austerity measures and a Niagara of disenchantment.

On taking up the premiership, Gonzi was not sure-footed. Some of his earliest decisions had left a bad taste in the mouth and irritated some of his followers. The first was his personal initiative to nominate Fenech Adami as President of Malta, a move which many considered divisive. Gonzi lost an opportunity to make a clean break with the past, and steer local politics towards a new environment. He flunked it.

Stress

As it happened, that was a time when the Nationalist Party was experiencing the pain of internal stress, culminating in the resignation of Finance Minister John Dalli, who was one of the more experienced Cabinet Ministers. At that crucial moment, Gonzi decided to take personal responsibility for the Finance Ministry. This has frustrated the hopes of the Young Turks in the Nationalist Party, adding to the stress. Worse still, the Finance Ministry has been deprived of a minister who could give it his undivided attention, and this at a stage when the government’s finances are, to put it mildly, under strain and the economy is going through a bad patch.

The poor state of the Maltese economy is, very largely, an inheritance from the Fenech Adami administration, which has been in office ever since l987 – except for a short, 22-month stint between l996 and l998. Gonzi has been Fenech Adami’s Cabinet co-partner since l998.

Haemorrhage

Throughout this entire period, Nationalist gurus have been churning out paeans of self-congratulation, claiming success and achievement, and anticipating greater things to come.

Reports and studies have been commissioned, surveys have been carried out and experts have been engaged. The cost, which was prodigious, has never been properly and accurately assessed. The end result was that the haemorrhage has been aggravated. The economy remains in the doldrums, performing well below the government’s own limited projections and, in most cases, trailing behind other EU member states.

This lacklustre performance belies the hollow claims of the Gonzi administration that the economy is “on track” and is picking up. The much-heralded “New Spring” has never materialised. The vast majority of Maltese citizens know, from sheer personal experience, that they have suffered a set back and have been short-changed. More and more frustrated electors now believe that a change of direction is of the essence.

Party considerations aside, what Malta needs above everything else is a government that knows where it is going. It needs a road map. It badly needs an industrial policy and a set of priorities, established with the consent of the governed.

Veritable quagmire

The government could have mobilised the Malta Council for Economic and Social Develop-ment very early on, to hold brainstorming sessions at which all the social partners could have contributed suggestions and solutions. Instead, the Council has been used merely as a rubber stamp or as a foil.

Whether it is through a lack of experience at the helm, or because of a lack of dynamism on the part of Dr Gonzi’s tired Cabinet members, the economy, having fallen on bad times, is in a veritable quagmire, with worse to come looming on the horizon, unless there is a change in direction.

Gonzi could not cope with his tribulations. He succumbed to them. These tribulations have now taken the upper hand and are rampaging across the length and breadth of the Maltese economy.

They must be restrained at all costs.

Failure is at our national peril.

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