Heatwave

The heat is on. It started rising towards the winding up of the European Parliament election campaign. With the Nationalist Party PN thrown into disarray by the active and passive trouncing handed out by the electorate, a heatwave burst out. Enough hot pressure gushed out from PN headquarters to indicate what was taking place. There were four basic reactions to the collapse in the Nationalist vote.

One: because Labour had strummed populist disgruntlement over government actions, particularly over electricity tariffs, the electorate had been taken in and had focused on grievances instead of on the meaning of the European Parliament.

Two: the governing team had not cared enough for its own, (plus) there are many Labourites in the bureaucracy and they are managing to make it look inefficient and uncaring.

Three: Austin Gatt in particular had put off voters with because of his blunt and brusque style.

The fourth reaction was that the PN had fought a very weak campaign, not least by switching the focus to an unstated but clear SimonPN brand and ladling votes towards Simon Busuttil, prejudicing fatally the PNs chance to take the sixth (provisional) seat, which required at least a couple of the smaller candidates to turn up with a substantial tally of the votes.

This fourth reason ultimately recognised was there for all to see early on. The PN campaign came from the dark side. It concentrated on rubbishing Labour candidates for the past Labour Party stance against EU membership. The theme had been milked dry and no longer worked. Voters preferred to look to the here and now.

The concentration on Busuttil made him more popular still but did not help the PN one tiny bit.

The first reason put up has weight. Labour was unashamedly populist and local. Joseph Muscat explained that away by saying Malta was part of the EU and so an EU affair. The second explanation - spokes by Labour civil servants and other bureaucrats - is ridiculous.

The government has packed public sector boards and committees with PN activists or fellow travellers and ministers have a tight rein on their civil servants. Bleating that excuse echoes some ex-Labour ministers after their government was thrown out in 1998. In my six years as a minister, the heads of department in the portfolios I was responsible for were Nationalists almost to a man. I never had reason to accuse any of them of disloyalty. Serious Nationalist ministers or ex-ministers will tell you the same thing about Labourite bureaucrats.

This excuse is dangerous: it could lead to a witch hunt which will weaken rather than strengthen the administration. Similarly, if ministers are pressed to look after 'their own' irrespective of merit, the country will sink back rather than sail forward.

Pointing the finger at Gatt is not quite fair to the man. He is blunt and brusque, and at times arrogant too. Yet his is the most bitter government chalice of all. He revealed the heat around him by breaking his unwritten rule not to reply to the media on Wednesday, following comments based on a report of an internet interview. He said it is impossible nowadays to correct each wrong quote. But, added Gatt, "when the likes of Lino Spiteri starts taking as gospel truth what one is supposed to have said, then it is incumbent on me to correct that impression."

The good man finds it hard to change his spots. His likes quote the likes of me when it suits them, as it suited him over the water and electricity tariffs. They can do so precisely because our views are printed in full. It is incumbent on ministers to see they are correctly reported even if nobody notices an actual or alleged erroneous report.

Commentators and the reading public, not to mention political friends and adversaries, rarely have the opportunity to hear a minister 'word for word'. When a correction does not appear with alacrity, a report has to be assumed to be correct.

The minister also attacked the writer of the report, alleging that s/he "selectively edited parts of what he said to turn them on their head". The minister wrote that, "as usual, no medium will admit to having purposefully quoted me out of context, selectively edited what I said or even disjoined parts of the same sentence in order to quote me fully but make no sense of the disjointed parts".

Such resort to style aside, Gatt was right to set the record straight. Revealing, too. In partly replying to the interviewer's question, "Are people's consumption patterns changing?" he recalls he said: "Of course, they changed... Unfortunately, we do not seem to realise that subsidies come out of the general budget. If you subsidise electricity, or if you subsidise the drydocks, or if you subsidise somewhere else, those subsidies are coming out of every tax payers' money... I think that's the wrong system (subsidising electricity consumption for consumers who are not social cases) and we have to have the courage to say (so), let me blame my party, first of all, we took too long to come to this system and that is the criticism that my party should admit to ..."

Aside from the minister's unhealthy mix-up of government and party, the PN has yet to heed his advice and come out with any admission.