The incompetence with which the Gonzi administration manages national affairs has led it into a morass of contradictions. For too long, we were promised the opposite of what was actually delivered. But people had gotten used to that. We now operate on a higher level - if that is the phrase - of national make-believe.
For a year during which tourism stagnated and industrial exports shrank, there occurred a "record" annual economic growth of 2.5 per cent in 2005, adjusted overnight from 1.7 per cent. In the same breath we were told that economic growth for 2004, previously recorded at 1.5 per cent, had to be adjusted down to -1.5 per cent.
The government claims it is on top of price rises due to its commitment to the free market and EU ways of doing things. On the ground though, people know... you and I know... that the pressures of inflation on items of consumption such as medicines and medical services, certain food categories, educational supplies and maintenance services have never been so high as in the past few years; this apart from the huge rise in electricity, water and fuel tariffs.
Possibly because of the glaring contradiction between what the government professes and what is really happening, a government minister stated price orders would again be resurrected to ensure market "discipline". Coming from the PN which made huge noises against price orders during the 1970s and 1980s, there could hardly have been a clearer signal of the poverty in policy and ideas that afflicts the government.
Yet, some of its exponents continue regardless. We listen to their arrogant and dogmatic sermons about how they are always in the right and the rest of the population in the wrong. Like the minister of investments and whatever proclaiming that it is wrong to rely on "subsidies" - this in order to excuse the fact that the government cannot be flexible over the issue of allowing low-cost airlines to fly to Malta because it sold off Malta International Airport sometime back to non-Maltese interests. With fundamentalist fervour, he extolled free markets and how they should be allowed full rein to determine economic and social change.
His arrogance extended itself to the pretence that, when proclaiming such an ideology, one rides at the vanguard of modern thinking. Those who disagree and stake out the importance of government commitment to defend national and social values, those who fail to sing the praises of a no-holds-barred globalisation, are labelled "dinosaurs", relics from a bygone socialist age. Actually, it is those who argue in his way and with such dogmatism who are the real dinosaurs. They have gone back to the political and economic rhetoric of the early Victorian age, when political decision makers were impressed by the rise of new industrial and agribusiness entrepreneurs.
Their laisser faire ideology and policies are again being parroted by today's neo-liberal fundamentalists. They want us to forget the lessons learnt by European society since the early 1800s that economic progress only makes sense if it is directed rationally, within a democratic framework that seeks to assure social justice for all. Society is not a self-regulating machine that under the laws of the market will arrive at the best possible outcome all by itself. Those who blindly argue so are the real dinosaurs.
However, it is not just in ideological terms that contradictions are bulging out of the Gonzi administration. The real lesson of the March local council elections is that the PN lost not because more PN voters abstained than Labour voters. A real swing occurred against the governing party. Sure enough, it has been taking remedial measures.
People who know how political machines work in this country will tell you that, even if unreported in the media, a push is being mounted in dead earnest to bring people back on board the PN bandwagon, by doling out personal favours. This is happening with the clientelistic efficiency for which the PN machine is renowned. We get the pious declarations from the Prime Minister about how things are being done with the greatest propriety even as in the sector of Mepa permits and allocation of jobs, some blue-eyed boys are being given immediate satisfaction. Among those with a very well-greased clientelistic machine to service his home district with exemplary efficiency is that champion of free market ideology and a minimal role for the state, the minister for investments and whatever. PN insiders rate his machine second best after Lawrence Gonzi's.
So it goes, so it will go as more contradictions protrude from within an administration that believes feel good is all it needs to run the country. They are deluding themselves and hoping that the rest of the country will again buy their delusion. Nothing shows how the wind blows as well as the run up towards the changeover from lira to euro. The only justification for doing this on January 1, 2008 is political. The best moment to organise the changeover would have been when the economy has reached an annual growth rate of four per cent or better. But we must rush to convert to the euro, no matter what... and steps will be taken to ensure that there will be no inflationary consequences.
You do not need a research institute, to determine that - no matter what the Central Bank Governor might say about the experience of other European countries - this is already not the case. Any householder can go out into the "free" market as of now and see with his/her own eyes that the groundwork is already being laid for prices to rise fast with the euro changeover.