Elections and referendums are won through the attainment of the major number of votes. Most bills in parliament are passed with a majority of votes by parliamentary members, stocks rise and fall accordingly, bank bonds and private shares do to. But as a financial war is brewing on a daily basis, are we to forget those who are suffering due to someone else’s gain.

So, are people just a number? Are they really a means to an end? If this is what the political system has morphed into, then I refuse to accept it. I refuse to accept the idea that a man, a woman, a child, and especially an innocent newborn are just a number. What happened to truth and to honesty for crying out loud? What happened to the deliverance of justice and the acts of altruism? Are we really living on the edge of a social catastrophe?

Politicians show statistics which don’t really match the tune of real life. So why do they do that? Well, that is both a complicated and also an inconvenient issue. Power feels good in the hands of the individuals who are calling the shots and these guys surely do not want this scenario to change. Having said that, we cannot possibly place all politicians in one basket; but the truth lies vaguely there.

Showing nice numbers and impressive figures in a time when people are making miracles with their meagre income, is a game which gives positive results… at least for a short while. In the long run this eventually will backfire and the mask of those late impressive numbers will ultimately fall and expose the real problem which probably by then would have grown.

The eurozone is not looking really bright. Apart from the Greek crisis, which has just got a second monumental bailout, Italy, Spain and now Portugal are looking as fine candidates for the next big bailout. The euro is on a dangerous path which is placing the hard-earned tax-payers’ money on the rim of dustbin. We need to move into more coordination and more integration of supervisor structure to make sure that if something wrong happens again we will be in a position to address the problem effectively.

We need to protect citizens from inflation and/or persistent inflation. A way to do this is to have serious but social-oriented norms which protect that sector of people most at risk of being slammed in the face.

Preaching wealth and showing busty figures at a time when poverty is once again rearing its head is not really the right way of dealing with a crisis. They might tell us they did something. And why not? They should have, considering that they are the ones taxing us left, right and centre, with or without our consent. But the true hero in all this scenery is not the one pushing his chest upfront of TV cameras and repeating the phrase ‘We are out of the crisis’ because, truth be told, this same guy was telling us just a few months earlier that we where never really in it. This is part of a cheap political strategy which aims only to confuse than to reveal.

It’s all a very dangerous game, you know. Yes, that’s what it is. In our political scene this is a game which is played one time too often. “Show people good numbers so they will be amazed and content,” that kind of reasoning, you know, “the feel good factor”. In Maltese politics this has happened already and is unfortunately still happening till this day. But the people’s eyes are now seeing beyond the figures and the numbers exposed to them by politicians. They are in fact learning to read between the lines and even making their own calculations.

That is why stating a round figure of a salary in euros is a more attractive number than if one looks at it from the old lira currency point of view. The receiver may be fooled because the fiscal figure looks bigger. More so, when at the same time, someone, somewhere in a cosy office will be explaining to a complainant the bill in Maltese lira so as to lighten the weight of the owed figure.

The eurozone crisis we are swimming through today did not come by chance. Many different governments and private entities are involved in it and they should also be blamed for it. The terrible and unfortunate thing is that the government never pays a cent to make good for the sins it commits. It is ultimately the people who will foot the bill. That is why people deserve better governance and much more respect.