Amongst all the analysis of transparency, good governance and accountability gone missing from this administration, there is yet another orphan.  The Middle Class. 

Much focus and emphasis was put on the image of the “new” middle class being something that the PL was going to generate, empower and even symbolise.  Billboards and videos were all over the place showing the new generation of clean “I’m In” people.   A generation portrayed as untainted by the past colours of the MLP in its nasty days, those days when its supporters rode on trucks, jumping up and down, screaming offensive and vulgar slogans or getting almost hysterical about the Salvatur and killing rabbits to dump on doorsteps. 

The new Middle Class was going to put aside the frills and frowns of the already there middle class and replace them with this altogether different charm and entitlement.  What was deserved reward, all that was hope through achievement, coming from hard work, solidarity from the state and honest families would be subverted into a creature of sinister means and self-entitlement. 

Together they would be the face of new Labour.  The Super One.

The transformation was pre-planned, just like so much of the mutually exclusive talk and walk that we have seen taking place these past years and peaking these past days.  Each had a sense, if not an actual name to the new life and job with unlimited income that they could expect to enjoy.  They would earn it by keeping up the image and noise associated with their new level of wealth and power.  They would follow the trend flawlessly, have a love-story to match any of the soaps, drive fancy cars, eat at over-priced restaurants and carry jewel-encrusted purses whilst attending VIP parties.  What they would not do is bother themselves with the demands required of the intelligentsia.  Whoever, they say, does not know that all of that is for the old guard and that now this is how the Super Ones do it, is just backward and stupid. 

Once upon a time the middle class of Malta was a good representative of all the character and potential of the people, of each and every man and woman.   If you were middle class it did not matter what political party you supported.  Red or Blue was an opinion.  It did not interfere with the way of life and friends that you could have.  Labour and Nationalist supporters mixed socially and inter-married. The University was a hub of mixed views and led to lively debate amongst students.  Until Gonzi went to MCAST to have a discussion with the students there.  Then the shouts and the staging began.  There in the background were the drivers of the Super One movement.  All was engineered to drive out the honest thinking man and give him a low opinion of himself based on financial differences.  There, the real opportunity for self-advancement was deliberately sabotaged.  Consumption was the only force for growth, not investment of any sort, material or intellectual.

Under the PN the middle class contributed a lot in the way of taxes and bore much responsibility and cost for educating their children and creating the potential for economic growth in Malta.  As the jobs and opportunities became accessible to more and more people from across the social and political spectrum, the middle classes began to be marginalised.  All the social changes too, least amongst which the issue of divorce, became the battle ground for who would lead the new middle class.   Church and state came face to face and the winning arguments sealed the deal.  Perversely, what was an issue facing many middle-class families and one which was causing much financial burden and grief, began the way for the new identity and re-engineering of the Labour party’s own manufactured movement.

Only now Muscat has had to return to the re-engineering board again.  The thing is that he did not take education into account when he modelled the new future of the Castillians.  Money and pride was sufficient to launch the pretty faces plastered over the billboards.

Anything they can do, we can do better or so they assumed.  Why bother with the sacrifice of hard work, raising a family and maybe putting your career on hold whilst doing so?  Why spend 7 years at University when you can make a University into an Institute with 3 courses and get a certificate anyway?  Saving to buy a house?  Fool that you are.  The magic wand will take care of that.  Just pop down to the self-service department.  Great discounts are available.  Government loan kitchens become designer kitchens depending on the lighting.

Angry about fuel prices?  Are you crazy?  What does the price of petrol matter when you can have any car you want?  So middle-class, complaining about petrol prices!  Take the bus!  Spend your cash.  The new Autobus de Leon is a gift from the rich to the poor. Millions of euros in subsidies just so you can stop complaining about petrol and diesel and yet, still the groans and moans.  Ungrateful people who should know better than to criticise Labour deals.

But, like it or not, the crowd that greeted Falzon, Mallia and Muscat in the Orpheum was not exactly the rent-a-crowd that he borrowed for the election.  The old version of the Labour party had to be dusted and poshed up so that it could somehow be In again.  No more smart phone – it’s back to dial-up.  Those green bakelite phones that made us argue about who should get up to answer.

The fact is that there is something about greed for money at any cost, that repels the middle-classes more than anything.  I am not saying that they are all comfortable with their tight budgets.  Any relief would be welcome, like fair petrol prices that reflect the drop in the market rate or better prices for medicines and health services, lower taxes and some subsidy on private-school fees or assistance with expenses for caring for elderly parents.  But to see good tax money going towards the fancy life-style of a self-glorified, devious and lying public servant installed there by the engineering of a new movement, who is already paid well over and above the standard grade, is just unacceptable to any true citizen of these besieged islands.

That is why help will not come to Muscat’s aid any longer.  He has betrayed the people who trusted him, shamed his party and subverted his own course by abusing the very same voters he charmed so well a few precious years ago.  His impression is that because his circle enjoy privileges and wealth, that we can all afford the same luxuries by the trickle down effect and replenish the source of that same cash much as water is evaporated into rain.

He can huff and puff about PN deals and a negative opposition because he has blown his own house down.  Stand where he may, the ground has gone from under him.  How much can the Super Ones do with their videos and vices to re-install Muscat as the number one amongst equals? Maybe at last they will really have to be up to the task and earn their lucrative consultancies as rain-makers.

What also irks people is the utter gall that keeps the army of people in positions of trust with incomes higher than private sector salaries, even when their no-longer trusted boss has been fired and whilst still running their own business or first job.

At the moment we hear about European countries seizing funds and valuables from refugees coming into their country, in order to maintain their cost and to fall in line with social security policies that apply to the native citizen.  In Malta, we watch whilst our lands are grabbed and taxes are distributed to the few and famous.

Nowhere, ever, can this pack be construed to be the middle class.