I was not at all surprised that certain sections of the English language print media and certain constituted bodies rallied around the government when the budget for 2007 was presented last week. I had a feeling of deja vu. Actually I was expecting it. You see, the next general election is fast approaching. I’m sure you haven’t already forgotten that, barely four years ago, on the eve of the 2003 general election, most leaders of social and economic might posed for a photo together with the former Prime Minister at Castille to welcome the oncoming and much expected “new spring” that would bring long-lasting, if not eternal, bliss to the country and its citizens.

Well, that turned out to be one of the worst cons ever practiced by a government and its traditional allies on the nation. Indeed, the Nationalist Party got what it wanted – power at all costs – while the rest of us mortals ended up sinking in an ocean of taxes, tariffs, surcharges and a very high cost of living barely weeks after we had just been told that “finances are on a sound footing”. To all that mess you can add a spate of redundancies in the industrial sector – including those employees who were promised a guarantee on their continued employment – as well as a tourism industry in the doldrums with directly-concerned organisations up in arms.

A very negative outlook indeed – and not because the Labour Party conjured it up maliciously, as Lawrence Gonzi and his fellow ministers-in-distress would like you all to believe. You know very well, as much as Labour does, that you are not living any better than you did before the last general election. Actually you know you are far worse off.

The Nationalists are specialists in fomenting the so-called “feel good factors”. They simply love them and resort to them whenever they require a distraction or a morale booster. Explained literally, the “feel-good factor” is nothing more but the hallmark of deception.

It’s like when someone has just kicked you in the leg and your aggressor’s friends keep harping on to you that the blow really made you feel better, until you’re duped into thinking that you’re really feeling great. Or, translated into the political world, it’s as if you haven’t got a good enough deal from the last budget, considering the hardships you’re still facing, but the same faces smiling in that photo at Castille, and some editorial houses, keep on telling you that you couldn’t have had it better – until you’re duped into voting for the Nationalist Party again.

This is exactly what is going on at this very moment.

You can fool some of the people some of the time but you cannot fool all of them all the time. The Nationalist Party has reneged on its promises to the nation in two consecutive elections. In 1998, it unashamedly denied that the country was running a permanent and structural deficit dubbing the “hofra” as a “hrafa”. Labour had tried to take the bull by the horns in addressing the problem, but it found an unhelpful print media as well as an uncooperative and destructive Nationalist opposition already grooming Lawrence Gonzi as its future leader. After that election, the Nationalists could not escape reality and, caught with their backs to the wall, admitted the deficit’s existence but unashamedly blamed it on the outgoing Labour administration – a position that was again supported by a biased media. They went on to tax people and invent a

tariff-based financial regime to make good for the shortfall in public cash.

Again, in 2003, the Nationalists won on the European Union ticket but only after promising everyone everything under the sun, including secure public finances and job security. They failed to deliver yet again and instead invented more fiscal oppression. For their deceit, they suffered heavily at the polls in three consecutive local council elections and the elections for the European Parliament.

Now they want you to believe that “we are turning the corner”. Had we not already turned the corner when we were told that finances were on a sound footing? Is this not the same corner we already turned less than four years ago? Did we never really turn a corner – as they wooed us into believing? Or will we find out, after the next general election, that there are more corners to turn?

In portraying, in the budget, a picture of economic renaissance and fiscal relief, they are aided and abetted by the usual sections of the print media, the same editorials and the same faces frowning in that famous Castille photo.

Indeed, the Nationalists have more than enough grist for their mill to spin feel-good factors at will. But can they do it forever?

Have you got the gall to risk trusting them all again? Or rather, do you want to be duped for the third consecutive time?

Dr Gavin Gulia is the main opposition spokesman on home affairs