There is no denying the fact that during the past months the Gonzi administration has been making strenuous efforts to soften its image. As they try to justify their past performance, its leaders are admitting, “there is much to be done” by way of making life easier for initiative, pruning the bureaucracy and achieving growth.
The underlying suspicion that nags the Maltese electorate is whether all the above amounts to political cosmetics, as we approach the run-in to the next round of electoral consultation – namely the local council elections.
The electorate is in no mood to take a fancy to cosmetics at a time when every household is about to receive its electricity bill with a knockout surcharge.
Austerity measures
The entire industrial and commercial sectors, as well as the general body of domestic consumers have been hoping against hope for a measure of tangible relief. This need not necessarily be in the form of tax concessions but, at least, in terms of meaningful liberalisation from bureaucratic controls.
None of this has happened. The government is obsessed with the target set for joining the Euro zone. That target imposes more austerity measures, aimed to achieve the deficit and public debt Maastricht criteria. Such measures are expected to affect the pensions and social services sectors.
Ministers, therefore, find themselves between a rock and a hard place. Their last (and only) resort is to persuade the electorate that Utopia is within reach and only round the corner.
Although GDP figures for the last quarter of 2005 are not yet available, they claim that the indications are ‘very good’, compared to previous years, and that 2005 would show a fair degree of growth.
They are claiming, “December unemployment was the lowest in six years.” Tourism will continue to recover. They claim that the hotel occupancy rate rose by 2.3 per cent in Malta and l.3 per cent in Gozo last year – ignoring the fact that total income from tourism actually declined.
They equally ignore the fact that industrial orders declined, and emphasise that 2005 export figures were steady.
Feeling the pinch
These mantras will not wash. The electorate is feeling the pinch of rising living costs and rising taxation. Thousands of families have been set back in terms that have become significant. Many businesses are struggling to survive on shoestring budgets. The issue of insecurity at the workplace has become a nightmare for many families.
The prevailing electoral mood is allergic to cosmetics. A growing number of electors are focusing on a few hard questions to which no answers have been forthcoming. Namely:
a) Considering that the PN administration has been in office for so many years, why is it that it is only now lamenting that “much has yet to be done”?
b) What has the government got to show after stepping up the national debt bill from Lm86 million in l987 to practically Lml,5000 million this year, except an annual debt servicing bill, approximating Lm80 million, which has to come from increased taxation?
c) How do the claims by government spokesmen and media, to the effect that the economy is performing well, square up with the fact that EUROSTAT has only recently disclosed that Malta’s GDP per capita in purchasing power terms (PPS) declined to 69 of the EU average in 2004 from its 2003 standing, when the relative figure was 72 per cent?
d) How do the same government claims stand up against the latest predictions of the EU economic and monetary directorate, which forecast a measly 0.7 and 1.1 per cent GDP growth in 2006 and 2007 – and this on the premise that private consumption is expected to grow modestly?
e) Why, after so many years of uninterrupted PN administration, Malta has been placed bottom in the Lisbon process?
Lambs to the slaughter?
All the above explains why there is “so much to be done”. It does not explain why Malta has come to face its prevailing economic predicament, when PN politicians and their media were, all along, promising a “mini-boom” and anticipating an “Early Spring”.
Come the next elections, citizens are not likely to go to the polling booths like lambs to the slaughter, as in the days of old. There are a lot of stray sheep that wandered away from the flock because they did not like what they saw. What they are seeing now continues to repel them.
They know that the Ethiopian cannot change his skin, or the leopard his spots.
Notwithstanding the change of leadership, the PN has been unwilling or unable to crack this hard nut. It is bound to pay a price in terms of votes, because of its ineptitude or sloth, or both.
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