Primer about the truth

Budget 2006 will likely be assessed by future historians on grounds separate from the financial and economic issues it was meant to deal with. Discussion about this budget is not likely to end forthwith. The controversies generated by what the Prime Minister read out in Parliament on Monday will continue for a few more months. There is indeed no reason to exhaust all their implications overnight, as many publicists and media controllers on the PN side will attempt to do.

The government's strategy obviously is to rush consideration of the 2006 budget, itself an early bird. They will be relying on the upcoming meeting of heads of state and government from the Commonwealth plus a compliant media to bury the negative surge of public opinion. Later, the Christmas season - so the calculation goes - should help to wash away the sour taste left by budget decisions.

I doubt whether this approach will succeed. For one thing, the effects of any budget, this one perhaps more than its predecessors cannot be felt overnight but will percolate through to the people in succeeding weeks. More importantly perhaps, the credibility of the Gonzi administration is so undermined that ordinary citizens will take their time to decide about what to accept as the truth or otherwise in the government's description of the state of the nation.

Put crudely, what Lawrence Gonzi and his colleagues say is no longer being taken at face value by most people. I cannot blame them for this, nor do I consider that people are taking things too far. There may come a stage in the affairs of men when it is reasonable not to take on trust anything announced by the government. We have reached that stage. All too frequently, the Maltese people have been taken for a ride by PN leaders who believed there were no limits as to how much they could be economical or even elastic with the truth. Now, however, the time has come to pay fully for the sins of omission and commission in this regard. The problem is that middle class and lower income families must carry the resulting burdens... not the government.

The build-up to the budget, with the stage managed announcement of steep increases in electricity and water charges, flashed a signal to which, unfortunately, for the government, people have gotten wise. The tactic has been employed before. You get apocalyptic announcements meant to make families believe that the worst is going to happen. Then, the government announces something that sounds very bad but less tough than what was being envisaged. On such a basis, people are supposed to feel thankful that things turned out "better" than expected...

That this approach was being followed for budget 2006 has been all too evident. We had statements about how bad the oil price/supply situation had become, which stressed its impact on the government's finances. Only, statements made were hardly coherent from week to week, indeed day to day. I have seen five to six technical assessments of the different governmental claims about Malta's oil bill that clearly indicate big inconsistencies in these claims as the oil deficit got pumped up or down by a score of millions of liri according to which audience the Prime Minister or his minister in charge of energy policy (if that is not a misnomer) were facing.

To compound the problem, we witnessed Prime Minister Gonzi boasting about how economic performance has improved. In his budget speech and prior to it he quoted the latest economic data. Yet, recent outcomes show that such data is hardly reliable. On growth, for instance, past data has been continually revised downwards from quarter to quarter. On figures for government spending, the record in 1996 and 2003 shows how unscrupulous a PN administration can be when it wants to fudge expenditure and revenue data in order to satisfy political priorities.

For too long, the PN managed to bamboozle people into believing they never had it so good, just when things were sliding. This time round, it may have been a trick too far. Whence the mood of disillusionment and anger at how the government is treating the country at large.

Indeed, consider: on the one hand, we have Prime Minister Gonzi telling us about his success in getting the economy to move again; on the other hand we have Finance Minister Gonzi telling us he is also succeeding in controlling the government deficit. Then as PM and as Finance Minister, Dr Gonzi launches price rises for electricity and water that, no matter what his apologists say, dwarf any increases announced during the last 30 years or so. If people stay in disbelief mode it can only be because, justifiably, they do not trust the government.

Budget 2006 is likely to become a watershed in this regard. A majority decline to accept the government's statements at face value. The Gonzi administration needs to consult some textbook of lessons explaining how to deliver the truth in ways that are credible. Given its fall from grace in the credibility stakes, it should do so with urgency and there is no need for it to be finicky when it comes to choosing which text to pick - any primer will do.