I was asked by a journalist on whether there are any Nationalist Party electoral proposals which I like. I answered that there are good ones, adding though, that what I like is irrelevant since the issue is one of credibility.

The flogging has changed to weeping

How many people still believe the PN and their pledges? It is easy to promise many nice things at the end of a legislature, in order to regain power… then, after the election, it’s a different story.

We’ve been there before.

People have been conned by GonziPN promises: Drydocks workers, bus drivers, Air Malta employees, SmartCity hopefuls. The list is very long. Many had liked what GonziPN were proposing then but we all know what happened. Nearly everywhere I go, people who were hitherto reluctant to let representatives of Labour into their homes are now flinging their doors wide open. They do so because they are interested in us and also because they have a story to recount on how GonziPN hit them.

People tell us of how their lives have been affected negatively by GonziPN attitudes and actions. They tell us of the arrogance meted out to them when they went to speak for something to which they had a right and were unjustly ignored. Rights not favours, they insist.

They tell us how they have been denied their rights while those within the inner PN circle are showered with favours all along. They talk to us about an oligarchy. I notice that the word has become a part of the vocabulary of many of the families I visit. They all seem to know what it signifies now. We are living it, they tell me.

The PN protagonists must, no doubt, be encountering these reactions from people who have been taken for a ride for too long. I am told that in my own constituency the Prime Minister is being given a very hard time by those who care to let him in. Others are refusing to open their door. As a result, it is clear, when one watches and listens to GonziPN representatives speak, that they do so in panic mode.

It is, for instance, becoming increasingly evident that a major task of new PN deputy leader Simon Busuttil is to regularly echo his leader in cavernous reverberations that all that’s Labour is so “terribly wrong”. He even looks aghast and thumps on his chest during his silly, theatrical scaremongering.

Thumping on one’s chest is primal behaviour but won’t convincingly compensate for the hubris displayed for so many years. Busuttil should perhaps ask some honest Nationalists what they think of his performance. Indeed, I can say that some Nationalists do not mind speaking to us to criticise PN generals.

One such person who has always voted PN, joked with me on how we used to pray for rain but this is no longer necessary as tsunamis of tears are flooding onto the political scene with GonziPN spokespersons now feeling sorry for everyone, especially for themselves.

Constituents now know that these tears are flying off crocodile eyes, under which there is a big jaw and an array of sharp, dangerous teeth out to snatch their vote.

When PN plans to flog Labour Party policies as pre-electoral strategy were no longer possible – as Labour came out with well-researched, costed and doable proposals – and had to be reluctantly dumped, the flogging changed to weeping.

GonziPN have reason to weep, for other reasons though, and not to dupe voters all over again.

They should shed tears over all their unkept promises.

They should shed tears at the suffering of 80,000 Maltese in or close to poverty.

They should shed tears for those who have to lump it with precarious employment. They should shed tears when patients are on emergency stretchers in hospital corridors instead of normal beds in wards.

They should shed tears when people, in the south especially, speak of members of their family with asthma or cancer related to sources which the Government should have addressed.

They should shed tears for the Whistleblower’s Act, which got stuck, thus hindering the hounding of corruption.

They should shed tears when sick senior citizens live from hand to mouth while the Prime Minister and his Cabinet decided they deserved a weekly salary increase of €500.

They should shed tears at their inability, after so many years in government, to address the problem of the high number of early school-leavers.

They should shed tears over the female human resource being thrown away.

They should shed tears when they realise that, in their greediness, they got us all in a mess with their insistence on a power station fuelled by oil instead of gas.

Now we understand better what’s behind this madness and GonziPN have reason to cry.

Dr.HelenaDalli@gmail.com

Helena Dalli is shadow minister for the public sector, government investments and gender equality.