Paying twice for same car

Political party pundits, still grappling with what happened at the EU parliamentary elections, may still be missing the more significant point - for many of us at least - of last weekend's upset result.

The fact that more than 90,000 voters stayed away from the contest shows the extent by which dissatisfaction is unscrambling the national fibre. Imagine the impact on the economy if 90,000 people stayed away from work for disagreeing with the boss? A healthy democracy is no different - it can only be manned well by ensuring optimal levels of participation. Detachment from voting of this calibre may not be as swiftly felt as staying away from work. It's a bit like smoking. It catches up with you eventually.

Even though Joseph Muscat rode to victory it would have been different if voters had crossed over to Labour - but they didn't. They simply stayed at home.

Why has this happened? The more available answer seems to be this: people have had enough paying twice for the same old banger. This government is unthinkably addicted to making promises it cannot keep.

Even before the counting of votes was over, the Prime Minister was again showering us with more vacuous pledges. The government, he pledged, now plans to be more sensitive. What democrat fails to be sensitive to people's aches and pains?

Lawrence Gonzi may be about to face bigger problems than both friends and foes can account for now.

He might soon find it difficult to keep his own parliamentarians in check. It is, after all, their voters who stayed home. It is their seats that are in danger.

While everyone blames the government hosing us mercilessly with swingeing taxation for its humiliating defeat, the truth may also lie elsewhere. A Nationalist Party candidate emerging from the hustings two weeks ago remarked: "We are all about to pay a heavy price for the government's 'who cares?' attitude.

I'm embarrassed by some of the stories I hear. There is a deep sense of frustration out there that goes beyond the money in people's pockets."

The PN's cloth-eared elections campaign couldn't have helped either. It all made Gonzi's pledges of a year ago a deadweight when judged against his record of eschewing economic and political sense with such zest.

How could he casually cast into the obliterated past his many administrative and economic blunders and then, last week, from billboards, promise to deliver more work, a better environment, better roads, improved education and much more only by sending his candidates to the largely ineffective European Parliament ? One has to be an ocean short of a wave to believe that.

If anything, things threaten to get worse before they get better. Little would surprise me if the deficit this year were to hit the €300 million mark. The cycle in which government overplays its tax card and then, as a result, sends its own income into a nosedive, is just starting.

We have that situation developing already although not on a grand scale. Exporters are hit hard and they are looking for ways to cope. One pharmaceutical firm makes its employees work seven days a week for the same pay. The instances where companies pay rates below the national wage are hardly occasional.

All this should bring the government and the unions out in hives, Instead, fearful of spurring increased unemployment, they stay mum.

Add to that the impression - as widespread as the flu - the government refuses to get rid of its more unproductive ministers, greedy consultants, an army of rapacious dyed-in-the-wool sycophants crowding government agencies - and you begin to understand why people feel unimportant.

The Malta Environment and Planning Authority is now viewed by many as an absolute basket case but there are other institutions where public confidence has atrophied.

Politicians, who we think know everything, are atrocious at judging, in time, the stage where people's last point of forbearance becomes their first point of despair.

When that happens we shall find ourselves deciding the government's future. Gonzi's next battle is to ensure it does not happen earlier than prescribed by the statute book.