Are people dying to throw the Nationalists out?

The Prime Minister, Dr Lawrence Gonzi, will have come up with one of the world's most predictable statements when - hours after his Nationalist Party suffered an almighty drubbing at the hands of Labour in the local elections held on March 10 - he cast his chances of winning the next general election in copper-bottomed certitudes.

One certainly never expected him to come out with his hands in the air. He's unlikely to publicly subscribe to the now widespread fear that bedrock party voters feel their party may have overstayed its welcome in government.

It is early to judge whether the prime minister's prediction is sound or not, but given his uninterrupted roll of electoral losses the question is: how did the Nationalist Party, whose track record is not the darkened portrait painted by its blinkered political rivals, get into such a miserable mess here and in Gozo?

Aren't signs of an almost endless flurry of state initiatives, some of which are remarkably successful, visible and tangible enough? Our schools were never in better shape. Our roads are, finally, beginning to look like proper roads. Banks are bursting at the seams with cash. Getting to a supermarket cash point is a struggle these days. Surely that is something of a tribute to how the government's incomes policy is working out.

Investments, by all accounts, are on the increase. Restaurants buzz with lunchtime and evening business. Rents, for domestic and industrial premises, have gone through the roof. And isn't the University providing youngsters with free education in numbers never witnessed before?

A brand new hospital is about to open its doors. Travel abroad has picked up again and the sale of hotel timeshare slots to Maltese nationals is a third of the overall timeshare business. Every sector of the economy - except hotels - seems to be doing adequately well.

This, unfortunately, makes up one detail of a much larger canvas, and it does not necessarily provide an adequate answer to the wider, deeper question: why are people behaving as though they were dying to throw the Nationalist Party out of power?

The truth is that there's more to discover under the crust; much of which makes Nationalist politicians look either mindless or careless.

Several factors must account for the way people's last point of forbearance keeps turning into their first point of dissent, district after district. What taxes the minds of many is what they perceive to be their own personal worsening social and economic conditions, 'imperial' ministerial attitudes, low-standard state services, inefficiencies and an atrocious record at convincingly accounting for the way public funds are spent.

Many of the government's headaches may actually be self-inflicted. For countless years and to keep the Opposition Labour party from gaining ground, the Nationalist Party forged into its day-to-day strategy one of the most dangerous weapons of all - spin.

Spin is the cotton candy of the mind. Spin is not totally dishonest but it works by not allowing hard facts to get in the way of a good myth. Consider spin as a dexterously decorated cake with delectable toppings - but with the inside stuffed with cigarette ash.

The overriding presumption to make is that people have short memories and then you go out and spin. Spin is meant to make people believe everything is growing up roses. There's one snag. Once people discover the truth they feel deeply betrayed.

If, say, the incidence of poor hospital services is 10 per cent, the incidence becomes 100 per cent for those who undergo a harrowing experience at the hands of harassed, understaffed, overworked doctors or ill-mannered nurses at state hospitals. I should imagine that is a situation that takes place every morning at St Luke's outpatients' department.

Almost every institution - from the courts to local councils to MEPA - has been at the heart of spin campaigns at one time or another. It's enough to make one think the Maltese will believe anything but the truth. PBS is the anthem of spin - and in such crude ways it daily reminds one of the way Soviet Union satellite states used their media to keep the ugly truth hidden from their nationals.

Take, as another example, the government's law enforcement services. While the government waxes lyrical about how wardens have brought order to our streets, the truth is that mayors up and down the country have been using the traffic wardens system to their advantage not to frustrate voters - largely by perverting the system.

In a large town the mayor is said to have instructed wardens not to issue tickets in large tracts of his parish, needless to say not to lose votes. In another locality wardens claim they are threatened with dismissal if they issue tickets to second-hand car dealers who, in total disregard of freshly minted legislation, use public roads as their business showrooms.

As a result, an entire population complains traffic wardens give them scant protection from habitual transgressors.

Another factor is this. While the government trumpets its economic successes, thousands of families cannot understand why their salaries can't be made to last longer. I know of people with adequate salaries who have to take an advance on their salaries to pay their utility and tax bills. They count among those who these days no longer believe the government's claims.

Here is another example of how spin - or the wicked creation and use of politically controlled media - turns on its lever-handlers.

For years, people have suspected there is widespread misuse of public funds. The government vehemently denies this. But then people discover that a handyman is paid Lm1,000 a month, and, as they scratch their heads to best make ends meet, discover that the presenter of a freak-and-creep chat show on PBS is paid Lm5,000 a week and another is paid Lm2,000 a week - all out of taxpayers' funds.

From that stage on it is one easy step for people to conclude - rightly or wrongly - that the election of Dr Eddie Fenech Adami as President typically exemplifies how Nationalist Party politicians are only in it for themselves. Add to that the inefficiency for which some Cabinet ministers are publicly pilloried with nauseating frequency, the arrogance by which Government ministers and their hangers-on deal with ordinary people, the little in goods and services that is delivered compared to the huge taxes people pay, and the less and less money left in the pockets of hard-working middle-class wage-earners and, presto, spin goes into a head-on clash with, and loses out to, people's real life experiences.

There is another culprit. It's the army of people working inside government departments and the countless regulatory organisations who act on behalf of ministers.

You can't hope to ever meet a more inefficient, in certain cases corrupt, and in very many more cases clueless coterie of people funded by people's taxes.

I was left with jaw hanging recently to discover how one government agency whose task is to create jobs is powerless to stop a small enterprise from being shut down by one of its subsidiaries, an entity run by people handpicked by the government. In this case the Nationalist Party is about to lose 20 votes in one fell swoop: those of the owner and his wife and the families of three employees who are about to become jobless.

This might not be a headline-grabbing story but this too might well mirror why people are not overly keen to turn out and vote Nationalist these days.