The last echoes of the Budget debate, with its associated political vapour, have receded, and the exhausting ding-dong battle of slogans and statistics is only a lingering memory, which leaves the audience bewildered.

Reality has now lifted its veil and, without the cosmetics, its face is by no means enticing.

The average citizen is pinching himself or herself to ascertain whether he or she had ever heard politicians seriously anticipating a “new spring” and asserting that the government “has been performing miracles”.

Many electors are now a bit older and wiser. Majority opinion has come around to agree that Malta’s economy has not yet taken off after all. It has lost its élan because it lies prostrate under the weight of a structural deficit and a mountain of debt. Thousands of citizens, as well as businesses, have lost ground and are in urgent need of succour. But the government continues to overspend and borrow, insisting nevertheless that the economy is “on the right track”.

Hard-pressed taxpayers have good reason to savour the Arabic proverb that holds that “no one is more truthful than the tongue of experience”.

Living on borrowed money

The hard, tangible facts are far more convincing than the loquacity of politicians. After bleeding its taxpaying citizens to exhaustion, Malta continues to live on borrowed money, and has been relying on the sale of its assets for its survival.

In so doing it may have succeeded in placating its EU monitors in Brussels. At this rate, it can only continue to do so while it has assets to sell.

The one and only route to survival is by way of building a productive base, penetrating overseas markets and earning our keep through augmented foreign earning.

From the start, the government never had its eye on the ball in this regard. Its priority was to embark on a deliberate public spending policy, the main objective of which was to stimulate a feel-good atmosphere, in pursuit of its EU objectives.

The ploy worked. The cost surfaced later on and is now expressed in terms of escalating debt, economic debility and creeping social distress.

Electoral yardstick

The penny has now dropped. There is growing a realisation that ministers have behaved as if they were living in a fool’s paradise, proclaiming, against the evidence, that the economy was performing well.

When the economy was labouring through a long period of sluggish growth, entrepreneurs looked up, but were not fed.

Hard-nosed businessmen, who are now in the swim and struggling for survival, seem to be fast coming round to the conclusion that “where ignorance is bliss, it is folly to be wise”. Their entreaties to the Gonzi administration have been of no avail – they now speak from the rooftops and occasionally take to the media to plead for common sense.

It is against this background that the last budget has been assessed by the electorate, which used its own yardstick for the exercise. It set aside the gobbledegook of politicians and the mumbo-jumbo of the spin-doctors. The average citizen took his or her own bearings with reference to the economic Plimsoll line – whether he or she has been pushed towards the poverty line or away from it, and whether rising living costs and inflation are setting him or her back.

More than anything else, this is the proof of the pudding. When the citizen sees bureaucracy going around in circles, public finances in disarray, corruption rearing its head and so many things in a state of abandon, he or she has proof positive that change is of the essence.

The keynote is survival.

After so many promises and so many false starts, the average citizen has been left with a sour taste in the mouth. This same citizen has been brutally overtaxed and underfed by politicians, who are adept at boasting that the economy is “on the right track”

The resultant disillusionment is now coming out into the open.

Experience is the mother of wisdom and the electorate seems to have realised, more than ever before, that there is a need for a government capable of curing Malta’s economic ailments by credible and feasible initiatives.

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