The budget for 2008, which Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, in his capacity as Minister of Finance, will be presenting today, must, for different reasons, be the budget of all budgets, certainly in his stint as head of government.

For a start, the people are expecting an election budget, even if the government has been saying it will not be one. And, being an election budget, the people will want goodies, a lot of goodies.

This is perhaps the last official opportunity for Dr Gonzi to enunciate his plans and policies within the government's Vision 2015 framework. Today, he will be expected to stamp his official seal on this grand plan and list the measures that will take us there, together with information on the sources that will fund such initiatives. This means he will have to balance - a fine balancing act if ever there was one - the people's expectations with what the country can afford now and in the future, beyond the next general election.

And here comes another reason why this will need to be Dr Gonzi's best budget so far.

To his credit - and it must be admitted that in some cases he opted to go against the grain, even facing internal resistance and scepticism - Dr Gonzi has been quite successful in addressing the country's financial situation. The fact that Malta met the Maastricht criteria and can now adopt the euro is proof enough of this. The opposition begs to differ, producing as its main proof the fact that there are families that still struggle to make ends meet. Both may be right and, there again, both could be wrong because speaking on the micro economy is different from speaking on the macro economy, even if they are inter-dependent.

The fact remains, as shown in an opinion poll just conducted by Allied Consultants for Allied Newspapers (the research company is not connected to the publishers of The Times and The Sunday Times), that quite a chunk of the electorate (32.6 per cent in the case of the study) perceive Malta's conditions as worsening. (For the record, the survey found that 25.1 per cent of respondents thought conditions were improving and 38.4 per cent said the situation was neither good nor bad.)

Which means, Dr Gonzi must use this last golden opportunity available to him before the next general election to prove that solid action and robust measures are being taken and so convince the people once and for all that things are indeed getting better and that they can partake of this improvement. Of course, this must be done without dismantling what Dr Gonzi has painstakingly built, at considerable political cost to him personally and to the party he leads.

The latest we heard, from the Parliamentary Secretary at the Finance Ministry, was that this will be a family-oriented budget. That has still to be seen and, in any case, the government should be wary when resorting to branding - the country has had a very sour experience in branding, whether it is for a budget or for the country as a tourist destination.

It seems a weekly Lm1.50 cost-of-living increase will be announced, there could be some changes affecting tax and the children's allowance system is set to be widened. But it is unlikely that the government will reverse its decision that public holidays falling over the weekend will be added to one's vacation leave entitlement.

Anything else in stock will be known tonight. One hopes and trusts the national good will prevail.