There is no more important requisite when it comes to plying one’s trade in politics than credibility. While it is true that some people will believe anything if you simply whisper it to them, the politician who knows he’s lost credibility will resort to much chest-thumping, shrills, and a body language that tells the whole sorry story from a mile away.

This is even more evident in this day and age when politics no longer depends so heavily on the theatrics that actually made the better orators of history stand out overnight. While people still love a good orator, he or she does not need to resort to any Hitlerite mannerisms or Dom Mintoff postures, however good they were in serving their crowd manipulation needs at the time. If video killed the radio star, then TV and the Internet have certainly buried the actor-politician.

The signs have been long in coming. Many of us remember how helplessly unimpressive, for example, the emerging Eddie Fenech Adami was when speaking publicly to the masses, in contrast to Mintoff’s natural talent to mesmerise them. When they met on TV, however, the tables were turned. Fenech Adami’s quiet, under-acting style was tailor-made for the medium, while Mintoff, who always needed a good-sized, reacting audience, lacked his usual magic.

There was even a time at PBS when for televised “addresses to the nation” we were asked to make sure we packed the studio with government and party officials and some of our own technical and non-technical employees so Mintoff could feel more at home and hopefully less concerned with the camera. It worked on some occasions; it didn’t in most.

But credibility is not just a question of being able to deliver a speech that can be believed by the watching public. It is also the outcome of a gradual accumulation of trust points one receives from people who care to listen on a regular basis, and in the politicised environment of a little island there are plenty of them.

The 2008 general election was the perfect example. Labour’s Alfred Sant, undoubtedly and undeservedly the most demonised politician ever in modern Maltese history, went to the polls on a wave of optimism. The Nationalist government was caught in a mischievous web of its own making and the writing on the wall was there for all to see. Its credibility was in tatters and it needed to do something drastic about it to have some hope of staying in power.

Using and abusing its power of incumbent, the ruling party embarked on a late but effective damage-repair campaign that helped it regain some credibility among those long-time supporters who were already loudly declaring to the world they were on the verge of dissenting come election time.

The eventual result, however, was that while Labour did manage to gain a lot of credibility among many voters, the Nationalists had garnered enough of it to help them hold on to power, albeit by the skin of their teeth and with a minority stake. The neutral’s final analysis was that Labour simply had not convinced enough people. It showed that credibility is a pretty elastic utility.

What has happened since is that the very same measured credibility that Lawrence Gonzi managed to construe almost four years ago, is now an enormous black hole that is viciously swallowing him. He has lost credibility with hundreds upon hundreds of workers from all sectors of the economy who were first promised, in black and white, that their jobs were secure, only to find themselves out in the cold and, to add insult to injury, being insulted and blackmailed at the same time.

The credibility game that Gonzi has played since taking over from Fenech Adami has become a cruel instrument of self-annihilation. His own backbenchers, young stallions willing and able to lead the pack at the wink of an eye, have been a main source of irritation since they felt sidelined and ignored. Filling their ample mouths with taxpayers’ money only helped accelerate further the fast shrinking process of his credibility.

Potential rivals, still casting serious doubts over that same credibility – or the lack of it – among both supporters and people in general, were quietly sent to Siberia, the financial haven of Brussels. Their all too familiar ghosts, however, continue to haunt him.

At the administrative level, Gonzi’s credibility has not fared any better. The long and winding road to the Delimara power station extension is seemingly endless. It is such a sad and sordid story that it has obliterated any credibility he may have had with foreign investors and entrepreneurs. Dragged in all its mud and slime is the Maltese citizen who, from his miserable earnings, is still paying some of the highest water and electricity bills anywhere in the Europe Union.

Joseph Muscat’s pledge to reduce these bills, backed by a solid reading of the economic situation and, recently, by respected professionals in the business of energy production, has been met by derision from the Gonzi camp. And how do they go about it? By going back three to four decades when the technology was still in a state of development and, ironically, the economy was in a far better situation!

Credibility is not something one digs for in an ancient site. It has to be gained and protected. Once tarnished or possibly lost, it is not easy to retrieve it. The SmartCity mess and the Arriva fiasco, authored by a deflated Austin Gatt, bear witness to this reality. The game that was played in 2008 cannot be repeated, but there will no doubt be some new tactics and methods deployed in the hope of political salvage.

The one glaring reality is that while Gonzi & Co continues to search for ways and means of collective survival, the electorate has moved on, quite evidently unconcerned. The reason is obvious. Some clichés, no matter how many times repeated and brought up to satisfy stances and arguments, tend to re-invent themselves and to re-institute themselves well into such recurring situations – Lincoln’s “you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time”.

Especially if your credibility has reached a record low.