I don’t know about you guys, and nobody seems to notice or comment about it.

But lately this Johnny Citizen seems to have been targeted by the powers that be.

First came the electricity bill, which ARMS in its wisdom sent after six months, a body blow that would shake any family’s foundation, although a lucky few received a bill after two.

The fact that no one seems to be in a frenzy about it, as against what happened just a few years ago when the changeover to ARMS was taking place and again the citizens did not receive any bills until they all came tumbling down the letterboxes, is instructive.

Either people have learned to factor in, as common sense dictates, the average bill for each month, or else people are so well off that such a sizeable bill does not really ruffle them.

But that was not the only bill to drop in the letterbox.

Someone in government seems to have given an order for all outstanding bills to be collected pronto.

And, as a result, Transport Malta has shaken off its lethargy and has checked its list of cars that have not had their licences renewed for years and years, cross-checked it with the list of cars that have been scrapped and sent a letter to people with cars in their name whose licences have not been renewed.

The list went as far back as seven years and included cars that had been stolen, burnt down and which had been disposed of according to the rules of the time. But, according to TM today, the proper authorities must be notified when a car is scrapped and a list of fines awaits those who have failed to do so.

Attempts to contact TM proved to be a futile exercise.

There are other cases of the government rounding up fines or payments due. But there are also, or so it seems from this restricted point of view, certain no go areas as well. Thus, for instance, company Income Tax is alive and working but personal Income Tax seems to have taken a back seat.

The government’s other bugbear is the dratted television licence about which many pledges have been made regarding its abolition. Usually, at around this pre-budget time, those of us who are negligent receive many reminders about it. This year, they seem to be missing, or perhaps the floods washed them away.

Now let’s go from the micro to the macro.

Recent figures published speak about the deficit levels not being where they were meant to be and, consequently, about the Commission urging the government to do something about it.

It would seem the government could choose any of three policy directions: either introduce more taxes, or cut expenditure or squeeze Johnny Citizen for any dues of he was unaware.

The government, in these pre-election days, refused to go down the ‘more taxes’ road. At first it chose to restrict expenditure but that is a tricky road to take. Alfred Sant found how tricky that was when, in 1997, he ordered a percentage cut on all expenditure by ministries and departments and how this seemingly clear order was carried out when it was implemented by the department heads, who kept all their perks but cut off allowances and overtime from the people at the bottom, thus increasing popular anger.

It would seem that this time around, the government tinkered with some expenditure but this being a pre-election year, as one can see from the most recent government income and expenditure figures in the Government Gazette, capital expenditure has actually shot up.

The Opposition has been claiming that the government shifted some of the deficit onto the Enemalta figures and have been crying treason to high heavens.

A discussion about Enemalta would take volumes, and is very necessary. That Enemalta needs to put its house in order goes without saying: suffice it to state that the capital expenditure that built the original Delimara power station (early 1990s) is all but unpaid, except for a million or so.

To consider that Enemalta’s dues and debts are not part of the sovereign debt burden may be right according to the book but wrong in any sense.

But if the Opposition is right when it insists that Enemalta’s debts are part of the government debt, then it cannot square the circle when it commits itself to lowering the electricity rates. That is one dilemma that must be unravelled before the election.

Anyway, the current squeeze on Johnny Citizen seems to have been the policy direction chosen as an alternative to raising taxes, imposing austerity or cutting expenditure. But that, I say, has only a limited value. All those dues on the government Income Tax lists, on TM’s lists, etc are not real figures but only lists that many a time hide unfortunate circumstances. The government will never succeed in getting what its figures tell it it can.

Hence there is only one inescapable outcome from all this: whoever wins the election will find an empty coffer and an urgent need to replenish the public purse.

What this government shrank from doing these long months it will be forced to do within months of gaining power. If it’s Labour that gets in, it will be forced too, just like Francois Hollande, to implement its dotty commitments – not just the one to reduce the rates but also the other mostly forgotten commitment regarding the car registration tax on used cars.

The present squeeze on us Johnny Citizens will not deliver much and will not solve the country’s creaking economy. We are usually told that only growth can fill the coffers and reduce the pressure and, thankfully, we are still registering growth, though of an anaemic type,

Then, we, nationally speaking, have a different bill dropping into our national post box: Tonio Fenech yesterday told di-ve.com that “the setting up of the European Stability Mechanism in essence should not lead to any impact on banks in Malta and the wider financial services industry” but I very much doubt his rather bullish statements that Malta’s banks will not fall under the new ECB supervision.

More than that, now that the German Constitutional Court has dismissed attempts to block the creation of the European Stability Mechanism, and once German President Joachim Gauch signs the German ratification of the ESM treaty (with only Estonia still to ratify it), eurozone members, Malta included, will have 15 days to raise €80 billion between them in promised paid-up capital for the fund.

Small we may be, but we will have to fork out our share. Johnny Citizen will not be enough.

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