The not-so-young but not-so-old will no doubt remember the song. “Flowers in the Rain”, a fascinating, chart-successful sixties record by The Move. I couldn’t help humming it spontaneously as I listened to the Prime Minister’s impassioned quip hinged to the perception of a nation blissfully happy with its flowering roundabouts and traffic islands while fuel prices continue to soar, utility rates are apparently just about to go up again and every day the cost of living keeps kicking us all in the teeth.

He must think we are all naïve. Perhaps he cannot be blamed for that, considering he was surprisingly elected back into power with a paper-thin majority. But to go out singing about the lovely little flowers on our horribly big roundabouts at such an awkwardly difficult time for most Maltese families is tantamount to insulting even those few political fanatics who still blindly insist the advent of Arriva has been a huge success.

I tried to picture Lawrence Gonzi in his Castille bathroom blurting out the very first words of the old song:

“Woke up one morning half asleep

“With all my blankets in a heap

“And yellow roses gathered all around me;

“The time was still approaching four

“I couldn’t stand it anymore

“Saw marigolds upon my eider down.”

The song takes us back to the period 1967-1970 when the Love Generation of eager, young men and women triggered off a remarkable change in the cultural consciousness of people the whole world over, forever changing the way they lived and viewed their lives. The Prime Minister cannot have had this in mind, considering that at the time he may have thought of it merely as liberal fodder, not unlike his stance four decades later, in the recent divorce debate in the country.

Then I pictured the Prime Minister singing at one of the imperious Castille windows overlooking the roundabout with its overgrown trees conveniently hiding the Manwel Dimech – that socialist – monument:

“I’m just sitting watching flowers in the rain

“Feel the power of the rain making the garden grow,

“I’m just sitting watching flowers in the rain

“Feel the power of the rain keeping me cool.”

If Nero had his lyre to play while Rome burned, Gonzi sings a tune that takes us back to Flower Power with its flower children, peace and make love not war. It is one way of releasing the pressure from too many fiascos and, at present, too many sailors jumping ship.

“So I lay upon my side with all the windows opened wide

“Couldn’t pressurize my head from speaking,

“Hoping not to make a sound I pushed my bed into the ground

“In time to catch the sight that I was seeking.”

The sight is, one assumes, that of even more roundabouts and traffic islands embellished by multitudes of pretty, colourful flowers put there, at an obviously high cost to taxpayers, and sown, watered and groomed at the most inconvenient of times to drivers and road users alike.

“If this perfect pleasure has the key

“Then this is how it has to be,

“If my pillow’s getting wet

“I don’t see that it matters much to me.”

Of course it doesn’t matter. While the roundabouts flower, the nation shrivels. Who cares? It is the same mentality that has hopelessly tried to justify a €500 weekly increase for the Castille clique of gardeners as opposed to a miserable one euro a week piece of solidarity with some of the many families who’d rather have more money than flowers.

“I heard the flowers in the breeze make conversation with the trees

“Believed to leave reality behind me

“With my commitments in a mess my sleep has gone away depressed

“In a world of fantasy you’ll find me.”

Well, most poets do hear flowers and trees talking, but Gonzi? On the pro side, however, he certainly has left reality behind him. His commitments in a mess? You can say that again. In a world of fantasy? The song writers, bless their ageing souls, must have had a premonition of a distant future somewhere far away in the Mediterranean.

Given the song’s place in pop and political history, there is an uncanny tinge to the way it somehow bridges that exciting late sixties epoch with today’s naïve reality of a so-called Smart Malta planting flowers to help soothe away the blues.

Way back in 1967, in a promotional stunt for the record, a postcard was released with a cartoon of a naked Harold Wilson, then British Prime Minister, linking him to his secretary, Marcia Williams. Wilson, not surprisingly, sued and the High Court ordered that all royalties from the song to be donated to a charity of Wilson’s choice. Incredibly, this legal arrangement remains in force to this day and is thought to have cost The Move millions of pounds in royalties over the years. The law courts option as a political refuge. Rings a bell?

Gonzi cannot have had any of this in mind. His predecessor once promised us a “garden city”, but take away the roundabouts and what remains? A stone-and-concrete city shuddering under the weight of pollution and neglect, a monstrous construction site now being used once again as an electoral playground.

The hope, fast fading though it certainly must be, is there will always be enough of that naïve majority left to take the bait. Only time – and millions more euros’ worth of imported flowers – will tell.

Thanks for the memory, but it’s the future, really, that worries most people. Naïve or not.