GonziPN has now become accustomed to having to face one internal crisis after another

Over the last months, three confidence votes had to be taken, one of which needed the casting vote of the Speaker. During this time, one senior minister lost his job, having been forced to resign after a vote of no confidence. When even the usually-friendly media starts asking pertinent questions, then it is crystal clear that this administration is facing some very serious issues in connection with its ability to continue governing.

There is little doubt that the whole system of governance labelled as GonziPN has imploded. Its collapse can be traced down to a high level of distrust between its elements as a direct result of years of nepotism and a lack of accountability. In a way, its breakdown was inevitable, as the whole system was built on the continuous need to dispose of resources in order to satisfy the increasing wants of its members. Under these circumstances, the system became unsustainable and recklessness became a virtue.

Against this background, the PN strategists and spin doctors ushered two competing narratives in an attempt to explain the sources and cause of all this turmoil within their ranks.

The first narrative is that the Labour party is taking advantage of the situation. Some prominent member of the PN described Labour’s latest motion in parliament as “cowardly” and as being done to “satisfy Labour’s lust for power”.

Such stands and declarations are rather expected after all. They need little elaboration and are easy to put forward in their banality. It gives those making them something to say without looking at the source of the problem. The PN expects the opposition to be a mere spectator. The situation is analogous to a football match in which you expect your opponents to let you play and if one of your players is shooting into your own net, you just tell the other team to leave the pitch and play no more.

A little bit more elusive is the second narrative, which suggests that despite the uncertainty, the economy is doing well and that’s thanks to the vision and wise leadership of the party in government. It insists that the fundamental capacity of the economy to grow is dependent solely on the premise that the PN remains in government. It goes on to suggesting that despite all the current problems faced, GonziPN is still the natural party of government.

At the same time, an attempt is being made to shift attention to the past, trying to perpetuate a version of facts created in the first instance by them and maintained till now. It often resorts to making odious and over-simplistic comparisons to the 1980’s. It leaves unexplored the fact that once the “low-hanging fruit” was plucked, the PN lost its drive and now offers nothing but empty platitudes.

The GonziPN electoral machine is spending thousands of euros of public money in adverts, printed in all local newspapers, telling us how good things are. It repeats the mantra that thousands of jobs were created during the past four years. It continues to drum about the high quality of our health services.

Yet the people see a different picture to the one presented. They feel uneasy, as they cannot feel the benefits of economic growth. They are struggling to see an improvement in their job opportunities. Many people can only find part-time jobs. However, too little government attention has been focused on such issues, partly because payoffs occur beyond electoral horizons, and partly because the effectiveness of government programmes has been disappointing.

It is not only the people that are unconvinced. The EU Commission, in its assessment published on the last day of May, cast serious doubts on the government projections and its ability to rein in the deficit as promised. The assessment report stated that the Government needs to “reinforce the budgetary strategy in 2012 with additional permanent measures so as to ensure adequate progress towards the medium-term budgetary objective (MTO) and keep the deficit below 3% of GDP without recourse to one-offs”. In simple terms, the EU Commission is saying that Malta will not reach its targets and needs to implement additional measures over the €50 million cuts in expenditure that were already implemented.