As the electoral temperature rises, we are beginning to see some of the familiar symptoms of political climate change.

Out of the blue, hurricanes of scandal blow fiercely, across one political party, then another, and then disappear. Voters blow cold one week, hot the next. Lightning bolts of panic strike Hamrun and Pietà. And the sea level of populism is rising, threatening to flood our powers of informed choice and reason.

It is populism that we should fear the most. Its levels rise gradually. We adjust to the changes. When the floods start, it is too late. We are already being carried away by the tide.

Populism is a slippery thing to define. No one owns up to it. However, there are some common traits. One common populist ploy is to boil down the complex problems of a country to a conflict between "the people", in whose name one speaks, and a small elite - in national politics or in Brussels, in commerce or in the media.

Paying attention to popular concerns is not populist but, sometimes, addressing those concerns by adopting simple popular solutions is. It is populist to court popularity by adopting a simplistic solution that will actually make things worse.

There is more than one kind of populism dancing on our landscape. Azzjoni Nazzjonali, for example, is built on populism. Take away its rhetoric against political, economic and media elites in Malta and Brussels, and its platform disappears.

Alternattiva Demokratika is a different case altogether. It inveighs against the two large parties but its identity is also based on its stated willingness to cooperate with them.

Questions about AD's populism arise because it says it wants both to place dynamite beneath the bridges of collusion that exist between the PN and MLP and to build bridges between them. You cannot blow up bridges and build them at the same time.

Admittedly, you can blow up some bridges and build others. But in that case you need to be very specific about the issues, what you would be willing to compromise on and, above all, why you think someone would let you build a bridge for him when you have just blown up another.

In practice, all this may be possible to manage. But the questions do need to be addressed.

The main dangers of populism, however, have to do with the PN and MLP, simply because they are the parties of government. What they promise, they may have to implement, and populist promises often have unpleasant consequences.

In the realm of political populism, there is not much we can do about mutual accusations of elitism and being cut off from the people - except ignore the accusations. No mass political party capable of winning at least 45 per cent of the popular vote (a vote that would capture government in many other democracies) is ever cut off from "the people" in a significant way. And both parties of government have members who are also (legitimately) members of, or involved with, the economic elite.

But this is not the only kind of political populism on offer. The current pressure by an NGO to have the constitutional prohibition of abortion entrenched is populist. It takes a very popular concern and insists on a solution that will have, at the very least, wide ramifications for our system of government.

This space, for example, has argued that the proposed solution may give the opposite outcome that is wished for. In addition, a former Chief Justice - who supports the entrenchment proposal - has acknowledged that the solution will hand over powers of decision (over the meaning of "abortion") from Parliament to judges.

Such a decision should not be taken in the shadow of a general election. The time is not serene enough. To insist on deciding it now would be populist. No such insistence has so far been heard from the government, and this is a good thing.

If we have so far avoided really serious cases of political populism, the same cannot be said for economic populism - where a political party listens to what households want, and then promises a solution that is popular yet too simple, to the point of inflicting damage.

Both parties of government are vying for paternity of the idea to bypass the cost-of-living mechanism in awarding an extra lira to anticipate price rises next year.

But economists say that, for all the assurances, this bypass will weaken the competitiveness of Maltese firms.

And it will weaken future governments when other cost-of-living increases need to be negotiated.

Questions also arise about the MLP's promise to halve the surcharge. This might seem to be an act of social solidarity. In fact, it gives more money to the better off; those who run the kind of household that consumes more electricity and water. It gives them more money at the expense of future generations - it does not encourage environmentally-responsible consumption by disguising the true price of oil.

It also threatens to raise the deficit.

True, Alfred Sant, on being asked about this after his budget speech, replied that it would not: He would simply prioritise the cost of halving the surcharge in his budgets.

Yet, it is not clear how he would do that. A budget anticipates expenditure for the following year but the government can have no idea what the price of oil will be in anticipation. So either a Sant government will have to be prepared to cancel promises made in its budgets to pay for oil hikes (which would devalue the entire meaning of having a budget) or it would need to be prepared to raise the deficit.

Maybe there are answers to all these concerns. In that case, they should be given.

Otherwise, a promise that claims to give to the poor while giving more to the rich, at the expense of the environment and at the risk of ratcheting up the deficit, will keep sounding like a promise by George W. Bush, the king of populists.

ranierfsadni@europe.com