Despite the ongoing public relations blitz from government sources, the Gonzi administration is visibly not succeeding in putting its act together. The Prime Minister personally is getting the blame for the slide into ineffectiveness and lack of direction that is perceived to be widespread. He is being called weak and lacking in decisiveness.

This is hardly fair. Much of what is going and sounding wrong at present is the direct result of policies and approaches that successive Nationalist administrations adopted under Dr Gonzi's predecessor. They were based on a technique that confused statecraft with feel good. Growth was fuelled by a rise in internal consumption, much of it ultimately financed by a drawing down of the country's reserves, or by borrowing. That new productive investment had been lacking for years was one of the facts which PN administrations took good care to brush out of the picture. So was the fact that through its spending, the government underwrote much of the prosperity that it then boasted about. Yet, the more the government spent, the less effective it became.

As the chickens come home to roost, the present Prime Minister has taken on the role of the "fall guy". Hardly fair, but not unfair either since Dr Gonzi was for many years one of the top operators in the Fenech Adami administration. Which accounts for his major problem. He can hardly be blunt about the reasons for the current malaise. Naturally, he would not want to offend his predecessor. Also, as deputy PM, he fully abetted what was done on the watch before his. So, he cannot now go tell the whole truth. There is nothing more fatal to a radical reform programme, which the Prime Minister says he wants to implement, as not being able to come clean regarding why exactly such a programme needs to be implemented.

There is a further complication. The Prime Minister carries with him the heavy baggage that Dr Fenech Adami accumulated over the years. Much of what the PN does is run by a relatively narrow band of friends of friends. Those who used to consider that this was a caricature of the reality can now re-calibrate their views with the saga of the purchase in Brussels of the Maltese embassy as background. The general revulsion felt in the island about the whole episode arose with such strength for two main reasons. They have nothing to do with the Labour opposition.

First, there was the blatant discrepancy between Dr Gonzi's "urgent" message for a more cost-effective approach to government spending on the one hand and, on the other hand, the reckless decision to spend millions of liri on an embassy that has little relevance to Malta's real needs. All this to satisfy the folie de grandeur of just one person.

Secondly, there was the style by which the project was organised, including the financial side-kicks of professional assignments to "private" friends.

On the latter point, much can be said. A very shocking aspect of the whole affair was the approach of a respected columnist or editorialist (I forget which), who although definitely Nationalist leaning, is not in the anti-Labour-at-all-costs brigade. Yet, he wrote that there was not much to criticise in the decision to give professional contracts directly to "friends" since, after all, they got paid "only" Lm5,000 or Lm3,000 for their services.

When we take it so easy about how friends of friends operate in public affairs, we are actually endorsing the Fenech Adami - and now the Gonzi - management style. One thing leads to another. Slackness in how jobs for the public sector are assigned or in how this or that person is preferred over this and the other, undermines the priority by which the government must function to deliver for every citizen in the same way, without fear or favour. Not least when the government already employs its own professionals to do the work it needs to do. Yet, public work is given to friends of friends.

In a way, one could argue that we have fallen victims to the provincial syndrome, while still claiming to be a nation state. In a province, networks of friends can keep administrations going for a long while. That becomes difficult in the management of a nation state and we are seeing the strains emerge. Like it or not, Malta has qualified as a nation state and is being treated as such, not least within the EU framework.

The Prime Minister's liberty of action is thus doubly constrained - firstly by the political legacies he has inherited; secondly by the inbred style of government that he leads. No wonder that so many people, especially in his own camp, have already turned negative regarding Dr Gonzi and judge him a feeble decision-maker.

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