‘The game of just supposing is the sweetest thing I know’, Kathryn Grayson sings to Howard Keel in that excellent movie, Show Boat. Kathryn Grayson, if you remember, was Oreste Kirkop’s leading lady in The Vagabond King.

The name of the song where that ‘supposing’ bit is sung, is Make Believe. It is a beautiful song, wonderfully crafted.

In Malta we do not sing make believe. We live it.

Or rather, we would live make believe, if we were to go along with Lawrence Gonzi and his wild fantasies. Lawrence Gonzi lives make believe.

We are doing so well, Dr Gonzi fantasises loudly, for us all to hear.

Now if he were to say, I am doing so well, that would be fact. For he is doing well. With a bit of troubled mind, of course, for nothing comes easy in life. But he is doing well. Really well. For himself.

However, the pronoun he uses is ‘we’, not ‘I’. And the change of pronoun makes his quote fantasy. For we are not doing well. Not at all. I need not mention what Lawrence Gonzi gets which we do not. For one, I do not know all that he gets which is in the public domain. Much less would I know about what is not in the public domain.

I did not know, for instance, that he had voted for himself, and his ministers, a €600 earnings increase per week, when the utility bills had not even been hiked up yet to their present banditry level.

I am sure Dr Gonzi copes very well with the utility bills, without having to make Herculean efforts against unnecessary use of electricity, for instance. And I do know also that we do not cope well at all, though we make so many sacrifices to get by.

No, we are not doing well at all.

‘Others find peace of mind in pretending’, Howard Keel sings back.

Lawrence Gonzi does that very well, too.

Just nine days ago he told PN candidates at an AZAD seminar to keep on harping on the government’s good economic results, achieved in the face of the challenging global situation, as he put it. They have to keep on harping on it. Because, you see, no one is convinced.

“We arrived so far in these circumstances, just imagine what we can do when the situation improves,” he was quoted saying.

There he goes again. Fantasising. “Just imagine” he bids us. We can all imagine we have caviar at lunch every day, too, though our stomachs will still rumble, for all our imaginings.

But in this case which the Prime Minister makes, about “these circumstances”, we do not have to imagine. There is fact to resort to.

The global situation became a challenge four years ago, in 2008, the year Dr Gonzi promised us a tax cut which he has not delivered.

In 2008 Lawrence Gonzi had been four years Prime Minister. So we have a track record to judge by, to “imagine” what he can do when the situation improves. And one of the facts in that track record that is staring us in the eye, is that today Dr Gonzi and his government preside with unimaginable sangfroid over a €5 billion public debt, which he and his PN predecessor amassed in spendthrift policies, flushing our tax money as if there were no tomorrow. And while toting up that frightening debt, which is threatening to sink us, he and his predecessor were also selling the family silver.

So that now we have hardly anything to fall back on, except our wits. And the party in government has lost all its wits, as can be seen by its handling of its party politics.

But Lawrence Gonzi makes believe we are doing well.

‘And if the things we dream about don’t happen to be so,

‘That’s just an unimportant technicality,’ Howard Keel sings as well, in Make Believe.

Only consider! Dr Gonzi tells us that in the past four years his government has created 20,000 jobs. He and his ministers brazenly keep playing that tune. And even keep a straight face as they do so.

The best job was created of course by the finance minister, who did not want any ċuċ Malti at Air Malta, and got a foreigner instead, who is being paid €500,000 for salary. Maybe Dr Gonzi considers that fleshy peach as 20 jobs.

But apart from that plum job at Air Malta, it is all make believe. Because official statistics, and the EU’s statistics too, show that actually, considerably fewer than 10,000 jobs were created in that period. Considerably less than half what Dr Gonzi claims, in fact. And most of the jobs ‘created’ were apparently part-time jobs, too.

But that is just an unimportant technicality. Unimportant, that is, to Dr Gonzi. And a technicality. Lawyers thrive on technicalities. They build cases on them.

We mere mortals thrive on bread. And bread is made not by technicalities, but by the baker. Who needs his oven, and flour and dough, to make the bread. Not technicalities, or fantasies.