The government, and the Prime Minister in particular, has started the New Year off on a particularly bad note with yet another overproduced, highly partisan public relations message to the nation.  All said, the message was completely lacking in the decorum expected from the leader of the nation. 

It was bereft of any kind of authenticity one would have expected, and it attempted to smooth over this lacuna with the kind of partisan propaganda that was completely unsuited for a New Year’s message to the nation from its leader.

Not only that, but the whole production was laced with so many apparent untruths – lies by both omission and in fact – that one really has to wonder what kind of fools the government takes the people for.

Since being elected in 2013, the Prime Minister’s New Year’s addresses have become increasingly stage-managed, overproduced and partisan, and this year’s was the worst to date: It was a simple case of terrible character acting by the Prime Minister when what the nation, any nation, deserves on such occasions is a genuine, authentic, heartfelt message to the nation about the year that has passed and the year ahead. 

The whole of this year’s message to the nation – the speech’s content, the kitchen setting, the ‘actors’ chosen, the melodramatic scenic shots of orchestras on cliffs and, most of all, the several barefaced lies – would have provided the essence of a fantastic plotline for the classic British political satire Yes Prime Minister.

Unfortunately, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s New Year’s speech came about 30 years too late for that.  The episode could have seen Sir Humphrey pulling every trick in the book to force the Prime Minister to tone down his overly-enthusiastic, highly partisan, boastful and self-congratulatory speech into what could pass for a down-to-earth message to the nation.

Unfortunately, there appears to be no Sir Humphrey at Castille to temper the government’s communications-department-gone-wild.  Perhaps Castille has instead the antithesis of Sir Humphrey.

The main difference here is that in Yes Prime Minister, Prime Minister’s part is played by an actor, but in Mata’s 2016 New Year’s message, it was the Prime Minister who played the part of an actor.

There is the humorous side to all this: the Prime Minister attempting to pass a young couple off as your average newlywed couple who are able to make ends meet thanks to the government’s incentives for first-time home buyers, when the fact of the matter is that the couple’s family runs one of the country’s largest furniture companies.  It also transpires that the couple actually purchased the home back in 2008 – a good five years before the current government was even elected.

The fallout to all this would be quite humorous indeed if it was not so concerning.  Unfortunately, this is no laughing matter.  For starters the Prime Minister had been found to have participated in a number of blatant lies.   Perhaps even worse is the inherent arrogance to believe that the people out there would not get to the truth of the matter.

The Prime Minister has effectively been embroiled in what in other countries would be a major scandal – the broadcasting of barefaced lies in a leader’s New Year’s message to the nation.  Stop for a minute to fathom the political fallout had David Cameron, Barack Obama, Angela Merkel or Francois Hollande stooped to such levels.

Or did the government think that a spot of playacting, without saying it was playacting, is something acceptable for the leader of a nation to engage in?  It may be fine to playact at home with the kids, but to do so to the entire nation does little more than treat the entire nation like children, if not also with contempt.

Then there was the highly partisan tone of the message: there was so much back-slapping and chest-pounding that, it would seem, the Prime Minister expected the champagne bottles to have been cracked open not at midnight, but after his inspirational speech.

The highly partisan tone that the Prime Minister has adopted with increased vigour in his New Year’s addresses since being elected in 2013, with this last one being the most appalling on record, shows that the government is either insecure in its position, or that it is in perpetual campaign mode.

It shows a government that has accomplished little on a tangible level but which instead resorts to glitzy PR, untruths and exaggerations to mask its shortcomings in the areas that truly matter.

These kinds of PR stunts and slick videos were the hallmark of the Labour Party’s last electoral campaign.  Since that campaign had proved highly effective at the polls, the government is sticking to a formula that, it believes, will continue to work.

The thing is that this is not an election and this was not a Labour Party election campaign video – it was a message to the nation by the Prime Minister, and it was paid for out of public funds, not party funds.

The Prime Minister fashions himself as having been cut from a different cloth than the country’s former leaders but one must ask: had any of his predecessors - Lawrence Gonzi, Alfred Sant, Eddie Fenech Adami, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici or Dom Mintoff - ever produced anything as dramatic as the New Year’s messages being produced these days?  Certainly not, and for good reason: such productions belittle the office of the Prime Minister.

Are we splitting hairs, are we nitpicking? Absolutely not: the Prime Minister is elected to office to run the country on behalf of the entire population, and not to merely ensure another term come 2018.

The people will not be fooled by glitzy PR forever, and they will hopefully be looking for realism and the substance behind the fine words and splendidly choreographed New Year’s messages come the next election time.