The sulphurous, acrid smoke that has been hanging over the polarised Maltese political scene has become noticeably thicker of late. We are seeing more episodes of politicians engaging in close combat. The media have started to deploy their artillery, giving attention to the nearest, outstanding targets

Is this a softening-up process, prior to the launching of a full-blown electoral campaign?

And, if there is going to be a campaign, will there be a “war” of attrition, or is it more likely to be a blitzkrieg?

One school of thought among local political cognoscenti holds that the Gonzi administration is, more or less, in the same position the Fenech Adami administration was in l966, when it called an early election – with the difference that Fenech Adami was faced by a walloping budget deficit problem, while Gonzi is grappling with an economy in serious trouble, particularly so, the tourist sector.

In l996, an exhausted, lack-lustre administration ran into a quagmire of its own creation, which it managed to conceal from the public gaze. It fought an election, claiming merit for an inexistent feel-good factor, and anticipating a majority of 20,000 votes.

The electorate reflected other ideas.

Government’s predicament

This time round, the Gonzi administration, largely manned by the same team, finds itself, once again, facing a quagmire. It is still harassed by a deficit problem, albeit the deficit has been reduced. Its debt burden is more massive. The economy has lost competitivity and Malta is performing poorly, compared to its counterparts who joined the EU. More worrying is the fact that the governing party is depending on spending €805 million from the EU for its battle fitness, come the next election (The Times, 21 September)

The electorate is accurately and fully au courant with the measurements of the government’s predicament.

What’s worse is that there is no feel-good factor in the air. During the past three years, the segment of the electorate that had been inebriated with the promise of an “early spring” has been subjected to the rigours of the Exchequer’s mincing machine. The surcharge on water and electricity bills, in particular, set back consumers of all classes, as well business activities of all kinds, eroding earnings and jacking up costs.

In the light of these realities, the claims by PN spokesmen, headed by the Prime Minister, that they have been delivering, and performing miracles, borders on the surreal, if not the bizarre.

There is delusion in the Maltese political forum, and it is not likely to go away if ministers merely urge the electorate to “stop moaning”.

Rallying cry

Prime Minister Gonzi seems to have taken measure of this sense of malaise. In his recent speech on the Floriana Granaries, he tried to instil confidence by speaking of a successful “silent revolution”, which will “soon see the people starting to reap the fruits of their sacrifices”.

It has yet to be seen whether this rallying cry will stop the disarray that has bedevilled the PN ranks ever since they lost the Euro-Parliamentary elections. Dissatisfaction with the performance of the leadership overflowed from the PN sanctum into the media.

The electorate looks at life through the prism of its interests. It is, at the same time, idle and irrelevant for Ministers and PN apparatchiks to sit in judgment on the sovereign electorate and its deliberations

A political leadership that imposes a forced march on the electorate risks mutiny at worst and, at best, the possibility of stragglers incapable of keeping pace with the main body of supporters.

Dr Gonzi has not covered himself with glory ever since he launched the austerities of the Convergence Programme, in an effort to conform to the Maastricht criteria, without taking measures to create a safety net.

Since then, he has been at the head of a party, ever so often in disarray, that was getting systematically weaker

I remember writing in The Times, in November l997, that the PN was in need of more than a cosmetic change. It looked, even then, that “its agenda was in danger of decay because the party was not regenerating itself”.

It was clear then that the party was, in Lou Bondi’s words at the time, “almost exclusively reactive rather than proactive”. The future was writ large all over the wall.

Fundamental issue

The basic, fundamental issue was one of leadership, with the top party leadership impervious to change.

I recall writing in The Sunday Times of 29 August 1999, that “the PN has been static and its mind congealed” and, only a day later, The Malta Independent lamented in a leading article that “in a year since the last (1996) election, the country has had false dawns as much as there are stars in the sky, and yet the real dawn still has to appear”…”the citizens out in the streets see their standards of living in real terms falling and, despite all the sweet talk, they feel they are slipping backwards”.

When that article was written, Dr Fenech Adami had passed his prime. His subsequent political decisions at the Auberge de Castile did not bear the marks of a virtuoso. The PN was bogged down by inertia behind a smokescreen of constant sound-bytes.

The PN has been unable to achieve the semblance of a turnaround. A call for a government reshuffle has been persistently resisted

The case for a blood transfusion is, to my mind, irresistible. The more it is delayed, the more it will be thoroughgoing.

I have written a lot of the above five years ago or more. It seems that, in so far as the PN is concerned, the world has stood still since that time!

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