The past week has been dominated by the so called University debate.

I say “so called” because it was anything but a civilised debate. Those of us who were blessed with the opportunity to study abroad at a foreign university or, better still, to have done our post-graduate degree at Oxford and to have attended and participated in the debates of the of the Oxford Union Society will tell you that the Malta university spectacle was anything but a debate in the true sense of the word. Of course, the small minority who showed their true, undemocratic, colours cannot and must not be taken as representative of the entire student body.

However, having said this, I must say that what should really worry us all is that roughly nine out of every 10 university students simply did turn up or did not bother to attend for this debate.

That’s all I want to and will say about the so called University debate.

I want to focus, rather, on the change of tack announced by the Prime Minister and Leader of the Nationalist Party during this last week. I say this because ever since he became leader and prime minister, Dr Gonzi has asked us to judge him not on what he says but on what he does. Since the Zabbar meeting, however, Dr Gonzi has asked us to vote for him on the strength of his long list of proposals for the country.

There are two grounds on which to take exception to this. Firstly, a close reading of the proposals shows up a fair number of them to be repeat proposals which the PN has put in its electoral programmes time and again but which it has never got round to implementing. Among these, there is proposal number 213 which says that the Cirkewwa Sea Terminal will be built and financed out of EU funds. Then there is proposal 295 which pledges the building of a carnival and arts village. Likewise there is proposal 171 about a flood relief project for the Lija, Balzan, Birkirkara and Msida areas. In proposal 298, the PN is promising to take a final decision about the City Gate and Royal Opera House site. Again this is an issue which has featured in previous PN electoral manifestoes. In a similar re-hash, in promise number 23 the GonziPN electoral programme is once more promising to redevelop the Ta’ Qali crafts village. Again this is something which the Nationalist Party has been promising since 1992.

There are many more such examples but these are enough to show that the Prime Minister’s much vaunted 300 plus proposals are not all that new.

Curiously, then, many of these proposals on which Dr Gonzi is asking us to judge him on are also in themselves proof of the PN’s long list of failures since 1987.

This, then, underscores the second issue related to the Prime Minister’s change of tack this last week. Having realised that he is not making much inroads with his first appeal to be judged on what he does he has now opted for moving the goalposts.