The current multiple controversies in our country are being dealt with in all kinds of fora, from political meetings to statements to NGO events and press releases.

There seems to be one underlying trend in all the controversies - they all revolve around property. And then there is yet another underlying level - in one way or another, they all expect some kind of government leg-up.

This is very bad news for our country and unless checked will put the country light years back.

It may seem strange how in this very small country, property has ended up becoming such an important segment of our economy. Or maybe one need not wonder at all: the diminishing areas left for construction demand higher and higher prices.

Over the past years and decades we have assisted impotently as the construction business grew and grew, not just in its dependence on banks and lending but also in its employment and its contribution to GDP.

Yet, over the years, this sector has come to depend more and more on government help. Its contribution in terms of votes has become essential for any party to win an election. And successive governments have been complaisant through extending the areas of Malta that could be developed, through the expropriation (for many years without compensation) of private land for housing estates, etc; through extending the development area and through diluting the ODZ rules so much they have now become completely porous.

In the most recent cases that have come to public knowledge, government help has come to even undermine government's own rules so that what binds the rest of us does not seem to bind some particular persons.

All this carries a huge multiplier effect with it. Sooner or later, others will claim the same privilege. Sooner or later, the other parties may find themselves under similar pressures.

There's more. For the past 30 years, the private sector in Malta has learned to live without government's leg-up. And it found it could thrive. Now the risk is that the entrepreneurs among us will go back to the assistentialist mentality of the 1980s, maybe even to the central economy model where you needed a permit for everything.

As we see Greece disappearing down the hole of its own making, we can reflect how that country has not managed to eradicate the traits of the past - the reliance on government employment, the huge graft and corruption in the country, the outmoded work practices that have been done away with in the rest of Europe.

So too, may happen to our country. There are multiple pressures building up which would send us back to the 1980s and we can already feel what we thought had been acquired and learned sliding back and being forgotten. We can now see that neither joining the EU nor the euro by themselves produce any miracle.

Business, the private sector, does not really need the government to give it a leg-up. The most that is expected of any government is to ensure a level playing field and to keep government-induced costs down, which it has not always done.

Instead of an artificial government leg-up, how about learning a thing or two about standards, about ethics in business, about cutting-edge technology, about being a pro-active, forward-looking and outward-looking business sector?

For a long time, far too long, the private sector has had to compete with the government sector, apart from paying all sorts of taxes and payments. Over the past months, the private sector has thankfully seen its energy bills decreasing but there are other, not always cash-based, bills the private sector is still paying, such as an incompetent and inefficient government bureaucracy, that makes business in Malta hindered and obstructed at all levels.

Now removing these snarls of inefficiency must not be seen as any sort of leg-up. They are rights, which every citizen of this country deserves to have.