No malevolent hidden planet called Nibiru suddenly jumped out of some hidden solar system and said “Rat-tat-tat -taraaaaaaaaaaaa! Here I am!” just like Ryanair!

It is time for European citizens to possess Europe- Kenneth Zammit Tabona

I turned 56 on December 21 and, therefore, having survived the solar storms and the cosmic showers, whether they actually happened or not, I can now safely wish you all a happy new year with a degree of equanimity.

While some of us tune in to Vienna towards lunchtime today to listen to the Tritsch Tratsch Polka once again we are, with commensurate trepidation, thinking that the new year is bringing one of those cataclysms that terrify Malta and his wife every five years or so: a general election!

Like teething and puberty, menopause and old age, elections are unavoidably unpleasant occurrences that are inbuilt in our constitution to safeguard this elusive and much maligned and abused word called democracy.

I wish to discuss escaping from the past because I feel that it is the only way of freeing ourselves from the shackles of doubt and the general malaise that elections cause in small countries like ours where everybody knows or is related to everyone else. I had, in fact, voted to join the EU primarily to eradicate the stress and anguish that elections had caused throughout my childhood and youth.

I envisaged a government that, using meritocracy, was able to be, for five short years, the caretaker of our welfare, health, education and culture and, at the same time, ensuring that, with its foreign policy, Malta would always remain prosperous and safe within an EU context. This irrespective of who and which party was elected to government. This trend would also boost the employment of technocrats as opposed to politicians or wannabes to posts that require expert attention.

That, in a nutshell, was my very short wish list. We are, sadly, still far away from this ideal situation.

Political parties have very difficult ideological stand to take when faced with an election. You see none can be either Extreme Right or Extreme Left for if one looks at a Venn diagram of the two entities the largest segment is a huge Centre Right and a huge Centre Left that merge into one great mass. Now how can any party ride with the horses and run with the hounds? To maintain a nanny state wherein health is free and education is free etc one has to perforce get the money from somewhere, so if the ceiling of income tax remains fixed at 35 per cent or 25 per cent, irrespective of whether one earns €30,000 or €300,000 per annum, how on earth is the Government going to get the money?

So we have three main bodies in society. First we have the low-wage earners who depend on the state for practically everything and pay nothing or very little.

We have the super rich who write out cheques to the taxman happy in the knowledge that, unlike Gerard Depardieu (Obelix), they are far from being taxed commensurately.

Then we have those unfortunates caught in the crossfire between the super rich and the deprived, a vast concourse of people from all walks of life trying to make ends meet and having to fill in the tax gap left empty by the super rich to pay the ever-increasing demands of the super poor, if such a thing exists.

Strangely, it is towards this group that political parties turn to for support; a support that this group is increasingly grudging about giving and with very good reason for with every passing year they feel more and more abused and imposed upon. The political situation is so contradictory that it is little wonder that legislatures have been handicapped if not stymied into the one-seat majority poisoned chalice.

So there they are between Scylla and Charybdis, unable to put up the tax rate and, among other things, having to maintain the largest and most luxurious free hospitals in the world. One needs to be more of a financial wizard than a financial genius to pull off a stunt like that. Add to that a pledge to reduce the water and electricity bills and one would have to be a financial miracle worker and walk on water too.

But we do have electoral pledges coming from both sides of the House promising precisely that: a reduction in tax rate from one and a reduction in utility bills from the other. Is there some method to the apparent madness? One will never know.

I am a notorious innumerate and I have always trusted accountants to let me know, in the simplest possible terms that will not make my eyes glaze over, what financial situations really are. Even during my years at the bank my friends always knew that the sight of a simple balance sheet would throw me off balance.

Therefore, like the rank and file of Malta, I would expect these things to be explained to me as if they were talking to a seven year old, without jargon and mumbo jumbo. Is that too much to ask?

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