Soon after taking up the office of Prime Minister on 3 March 2004, Dr Lawrence Gonzi declared confidently, and no doubt with the best of intentions, that he and his colleagues would do their best to give a “special present to our country”. Specifically, he promised a new way of doing politics.

The echo of those words has hardly died down, yet the Maltese political scene is awash with adverse comments on the performance of the Gonzi Cabinet – and the noisiest and most pungent comments are coming from sources previously sympathetic to Dr Gonzi.

Obviously there is something wrong in the State of Malta because Dr Gonzi’s chickens are coming home to roost in large numbers.

Shortcomings

The view that has rapidly gained ground is that Dr Gonzi failed to impose his personality on his administration. He failed to introduce new blood at government level. The old and tired ministerial team lacked energy, as well as imagination. Whereas the country wanted purposeful decision-making, all it got was a sleight of hand that deceives the eye and an impression of action, which, on closer inspection, turned out to be only activity!

Gonzi said at the outset that he meant to concentrate government attention on the tourist sector – it is the sector that has done worst.

He proposed to step up ministerial teamwork – from Austin Gatt to George Pullicino, from Zammit Dimech to Jesmond Mugliett, all of these could go, and did go, at a tangent, involving the government in embarrassing situations and antagonising public opinion unnecessarily.

One does not have to go too far back in time to prove

this point, raking the malodorous smells associated with the scandalous Voice of the Mediterranean episode and the barefaced proposal to investigate the officer appointed by Parliament

to investigate the sordid events.

Nor does one have to scrutinise the MEPA wheels within wheels that drew the wrath of MEPA’s own senior internal watchdog, or the right royal mess that involved the wholesale reorganisation of the Tourism Authority at great expense, only to lead to the abortive, “voluntary” resignation of the chairman and chief executive five months ahead of time, but retaining full pay and other fringe benefits in those five months.

Unpardonable faux pas

These unpardonable faux pas, and so many others of their kind, gave the game away.

They betrayed incompetence beyond inertia, and partisanship well beyond the straight and plain.

But Gonzi’s inadequacies emerge far more dramatically and effectively when one considers how his government continued to overspend – often capriciously – how it brought the economy to its knees and the average tax-payer to the point of being on his/her last legs with massive taxation, how it presided over the steady rape of the environment at a time when the tourist sector was in free fall.

It is not the Labour Party in opposition that is now the most vociferous critic of the Gonzi administration (the Labour Party will have to carry the baby if there is a change in government come the next election). The slings and arrows come mainly from business operators with their backs to the wall, and from former associates and media sympathisers militating in their ranks up to the Euro-Parliamentary elections.

Unexpected quarters

It is the independent English language press that is leading the editorial charge against the government’s clumsiness or high-handedness.

Other unexpected quarters, which came in close support with their criticism, included Joe Grima in The Malta Independent on Sunday last week (27 August). He lamented the fact that “the problem with Tourism Minister Zammit Dimech is that, like the Prime Minister, he lost the confidence and the support of the people he leads”.

In the same issue, opinion maker Josanne Cassar bared her thoughts with the following words: “The dark mutterings I hear and the general feeling of being fed up with the whole lot who are still clinging to their ministerial seats with the edge of their fingertips, is I think, the natural outcome of what happens when the same party has been in power for too long.”

She added: “Thatcher’s undoing was the poll tax, while KMB, with Mintoff pulling his strings, stumbled from one gaffe to the other. In the years to come, Gonzi, unfortunately, will probably be best remembered for the summer when the word ‘brand’ became synonymous with all of us laughing our heads off.”

For the Gonzi government to become, at the same time, the scapegoat of all his critics, and laughing stock of the nation is the ultimate accolade before the next general election.

Josanne Cassar held forth the view that “the natives are restless”. In truth, they have been positively antagonised and they demand change.

The outcry will become more pronounced because it is trust in the here-and-now that is at issue.

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