One third of the Maltese electorate will be due for consultation this coming week-end, by means of the ballot box. The exercise will be far more reliable than any of those public opinion surveys conducted by the media.
This time round, the outcome of local council elections will be of added significance, considering that the main political parties have already gone into high gear for the next general elections.
The incumbent PN administration has been showing signs of strain after so many years in office. Of late, it has betrayed a worrying lack of new ideas. It has been out of touch with voters, out of synch with reform and out of luck with the gods.
The ill-timed introduction of the hefty surcharge on water and electricity bills and the still more recent publication of the damning “Secret Report”, by an independent commission, which reported on the PN debacle at the 2002 Euro-Parliamentary Elections, seem to suggest that the PN high command has proved to be woefully short in the marbles department.
Potent brew
By and large, the Maltese electorate remains domestic policy oriented, and when the above-mentioned worries coincide with a shrinking or stagnating economy, the result is a potent brew.
It may be premature to push the argument. It is the sovereign electorate that will have the final word.
At this stage, however, it is permissible to commiserate with Prime Minister and PN Leader, Dr Lawrence Gonzi, whose heritage has proved to be a bed of nails.
He inherited a party stuffed with superannuated politicians, whose characteristic wait-and-see attitude looked like paralysis.
They had nothing to say beyond bashing the Opposition, mainly by way of a remorseless, ritual incantation about Alfred Sant’s shortcomings.
Increasingly, ministers have shown a propensity for the applause of their supporters at cozy meetings to that of the electorate. They have been poor in presentation, shallow in their rhetoric and weak in substance.
Baroque politics
In the baroque politics of Malta, the obvious answers are not always the correct ones. Politicians could, at times, spring surprises after seeking shelter for long periods behind a wall of pusillanimousness and equivocation.
Can they do this successfully when the fiscal deficit has been an overhanging monster for so long? Is the recent pre-electoral can-do and extrovert flamboyance of the PN perceived as can’t-cope frustration?
Four topics tend to loom large and menacing over the Gonzi Cabinet: taxation, welfare, law and order, and the environment.
In some respects, something resembling a social emergency seems to have developed in all these areas. Very many middle-income and working class citizens have fallen behind, as a result of a crisis, long foreseen and accurately suspected,
The government has become acutely conscious of the muttering in the pubs and public squares. The PN’s militant audience has been dwindling, whilst segments of the disillusioned electorate have taken to the streets.
Basic aspirations
Deep down, what are the electorate’s basic aspirations? Hard-pressed citizens, and they include small traders (for long our economic infantrymen), want to see the economy moving out of bottom gear. They know that politics is about ways and means. The rest is myth.
The average citizen is realizing that the government has dropped all contact with economic and fiscal reality. It is voracious and insatiable; it seems to have lost the virtue of frugality and economy. Somehow, it has ceased to create. It has been overtaken by inertia. It is this feeling that motivates enterprising citizens, who yearn to relight the spark of initiative. Such citizens are the standard bearers of the “floating vote”.
In the PN holy-of-holies, some “strategy experts” seem to have become unfit to understand, let alone foresee, the arrival of the emancipated floating vote. This may well turn out to be, not a mistake, but a delusion.
The ersatz strategy experts, who were so voluble on trifles and short on essentials, operated in the dark, did their own thing and relied on propaganda.
Those who live by propaganda, more often than not, ultimately perish by the champagne cocktail.
Next Saturday’s will be the fourth consultation with the Maltese electorate since Dr Gonzi became Prime Minister and assumed the leadership of the National Party. Dr Gonzi lost all of the first three rounds.
Concerned electors are wondering what they will see when the votes are counted next Saturday night and the footlights come up again.
On the fringes of the night, would it be possible to see the light of the long-awaited dawn?
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