Princely?

Apologists and editorialists for the Gonzi administration are having an increasingly difficult task on their hands. It shows. To maintain their credibility, they have to embarrassedly make reservations about how the government is proceeding, even while they focus on what they can project as the positive aspects of its actions. They go to ridiculous extremes to ignore whatever Labour is doing that could be construed as "positive" while rushing to highlight whatever can show Labour black. These tactics, already shop-worn, have become too obvious.

Worse, they are not succeeding in deflecting public attention from the government's failures. With hindsight, it has become clear that the basic political failure has been Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi's decision not to reshuffle his Cabinet. He could have done it both when he started his term of office or later, during the numerous occasions when his administration got slaps in the face from the electorate. Presumably, he has polls similar to those held by others, which consistently show that his own performance and that of his government are receiving the thumbs down from the people, and this to a greater extent than is allowed by surveys that the "independent" media publish.

Dr Gonzi has been proclaiming the need for change. Yet, when it comes to changing what he has the best authority to do, things remain the same. It is as if the Prime Minister has remained a prisoner of the situation in which his predecessor left him. Despite the rhetoric, he neither has the wish nor the will to change.

So, in the communications game by which political messages get promoted or shifted to the side, for once the media players who push the government's position are labouring under a strange handicap. Government policy and decision-making are so weak and so thin on the ground that they provide little leeway for the fabrication of stories that project decisiveness and forward movement. At the same time, when the government does "decide", this seems to occur manifestly as a result of outside pressures that the Gonzi administration could no longer ignore (such as over the electricity and water surcharges and over the quick sale at a discount of Maltacom shares), or as a result of partisan calculations. No wonder that many of the PN's own supporters are finding themselves strongly at odds with the direction (if it can be called that) which Dr Gonzi is taking.

Increasingly too, the rationale being advanced for whatever is "decided" is arbitrary, not to say princely. "L'etat, c'est moi" seems to be the underlying theme. If the Prime Minister and his Cabinet say something, so be it, we don't need any further justification. Indeed, we have had government apologists in past weeks going to the length of saying that if there are dissenting or contrary views to be made about the euro conversion, or the Maltacom sale, or the massive extension being proposed to existing development zones, then these all amount to unnecessary controversies and obstruction.

To be sure, the sudden extension of zones for building purposes is the most recent case in point: shrouded in double speak, government announcements about it have simply tried to hide that it is a massive example of shifting policy, in order to accommodate the partisan needs of a ruling party which has lost too much support. We get jesuitical articles from supporters of the regime making contorted arguments about which percentage of abusive extensions would make the proposed changes politically acceptable or not. We get the minister responsible for the mess choosing the time when Parliament is most deserted of MPs to make a "statement" about the extension of building permits...

The truth is that the Gonzi administration is in very bad shape to implement change. It had given the impression that, with EU membership, everything would fall into place all by itself and for the better. With time, it has become apparent to most people that the country was badly prepared for EU membership by those who ruled it and were most insistent that the process would be vastly and immediately beneficial. This sense of disillusionment is bound to persist in the short to medium term.

One outcome has been that drift and paralysis characterise wide areas of policy making, despite the image of forward movement that the Gonzi administration tries to project. Time after time, in the consultations that Labour is currently undertaking about its proposals for a new plan, we get people telling us: but all this has been discussed and rediscussed; over the years, reports and further reports have been drafted telling us what should be done; yet, all these years have passed and we still are discussing the same issues and problems, while our competitors elsewhere have gone on, decided and left us behind. Exactly.

This problem should not be exaggerated but it has become a very important one. Curiously, however, in the few areas where, rightly or wrongly for partisan reasons, the Gonzi administration is prepared to take the risks of decision-making (such as on the extensions to building schemes), it tries to fudge transparency by an implicit or explicit reliance on "princely" prerogatives. Which makes matters worse.