As the prospects of a general election loom larger and larger, politicians will seek to make the fullest use of the hardware as well as the software in their armouries. The hardware is the performance of their respective parties, as compared to their respective programmes. The software is propaganda and spin.

The current budget debate, and occasions similar to the PN General Council just concluded, provide ample opportunity for politicians of all hues to fill the air with political drama and electoral hocus-pocus.

There will be manifestations of self-glorification and aggrandisement as well as contrived visions of a happy-ever-after.

While they last, such events may hold the attention of the electorate. But they are instantly lost in the wash as the crescendo of political campaigning takes its full course.

The electorate has too much to savour –and it has to do this on the hoof, as it were, while it endures the relentless burden of steep taxation, skyrocketing living costs, and the evidence of poor governance and creeping corruption, which, in turn, has to be made good at public expense.

Mismatch

The stern reality which hovers over the contemporary Maltese electoral landscape is the mismatch, between the tall and colourful claims of the government party, and the plight of thousands of citizens who have been set back very significantly over the last four years.

The PN, led by Dr Gonzi, oozes a feigned euphoria, claiming to be “performing miracles, without being noticed”. It inflates its performance and overlooks the chinks in its armour. The Opposition does its damnedest, not only to interdict poor governance, but it tries to stake a claim as a preferable alternative government.

Seasoned electors know that this is the way of democracy and take the razzmatazz in their stride. Others, on both sides of the political divide, who are hostages of political partisanship, wave their respective flags and respond to their manipulators. They cancel themselves out in the contest.

The electoral scales will be tilted by voters who insert their own and the national interests in their equation – those capable of exercising their sovereignty and of discerning the facts in a sea of fiction.

Hard facts

There are some hard facts overshadowing the electorate that are too obvious to be missed, and that do not call for discernment.

One of them is the screaming contrast between the PN claim that it has “achieved miracles” (and that the government’s finances are sound), but the sour reality is that the maximum national pension has been frozen for the past 27 years, while living costs have been skyrocketing with

abandon.

The underlying, but undeclared, main source of Malta’s malady is the ruling government’s uninterrupted “money-no-problem” philosophy, which produced a structural deficit. The size of the deficit has been reduced – but it has not yet been wiped out. Meanwhile, the government amassed a mountain of debt, which is still piling up. The annual servicing cost of this debt approximates Lm70 million. Although nobody highlights this reality, it is an extra annual charge on the hard- pressed taxpayer. The government has done nothing to reduce it, much less eliminate it.

In addition, a substantial part of this intolerable burden springs from incompetence and questionable governance.

There seems to be no justifiable explanation as to why substantial budget overruns, running into millions of additional liri, should be allowed to burden the taxpayer on an ongoing basis, without timely government intervention.

Equally objectionable is the fact that, although there is the necessary machinery to safeguard consumer interests, no timely action is taken, as a matter of routine, to question exorbitant price increases that rob consumers of their shrinking spending power.

Sour electoral mood

The government’s weakness in standing up to the avarice of speculators has antagonised big pockets of the electorate who have had to resort to street protests in various parts of these islands.

All of this – and much more – has soured the electoral mood and no amount of last minute, pre-electoral concessions is going to placate in-built resentment.

These are the stern realities that, like Mount Everest, are going to be there at election time.

These realities have left their indelible mark and they are going to leave their mark on the day of reckoning.

The question is: What sort of mark have they left to date? Is the electorate gullible, or has it a mind of its own?

The answer is the prerogative of the sovereign electorate.

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