When I was a young man verging on entering into the political fray, a much older friend explained to me that politics was like a play on stage: the actors making up the cast change but the script is always the same.

Today’s crop of ministers tends to accept civil service advice at face value. The political harm this has done to the Gonzi administration is immense- Michael Falzon

I did not believe him then and it took me quite some time to realise the cynical truth behind his advice. Some actors, of course, put a different emphasis on their lines and the movement on stage varies from time to time; but the basic script remainsvirtually unchanged.

Last week’s re-election of Lawrence Gonzi as Nationalist Party leader not only produced the expected result but also left things exactly as they were before – a useless exercise with everybody turning round in circles and ending where they started.

In this particular scene, apart from the Prime Minister himself, there was also the PN Parliamentary group and its position in Parliament. Both were no more stronger and no more weaker after the mise-en-scène that was played over the weekend.

The ‘democratic’ re-election of the PN party leader left his ­relationship with the electorate exactly where it was before he opted to launch this futile ­exercise – instead of simply asking the PN general council for a vote of confidence – is in sharp contrast with the speech he ­delivered to the party faithful last Sunday.

This speech was cleverly charted: it gave Franco Debono a face-saving excuse to return to the fold and raised the hope of many disgruntled PN voters that Gonzi has realised the predicament he had found himself in and sincerely intends to mend his ways.

There is enough time for everybody to see whether this was just a convenient ploy – that has provoked its being discarded as such by some – or an honest new approach that the PN faithful deserve. I do not think Gonzi wants to end his political career in the most ignoble of waysand therefore I do not dismissthe chances that his way ofdoing things and his attitude will actually change.

Making the party really inclusive and giving priority to the people’s needs means giving less importance to the control freaks in the civil service whose advice – sincere though it might be – is not always conducive to the best interests of the people’s welfare and often disregards theconcern that stems from genuine ­solidarity.

Interestingly, Gonzi mentioned the impact of the increase in gas prices this extraordinarily cold winter when the cost of heating has become a very worrisome issue, even to average wage ­earners.

I remember that way back during the first two Fenech Adami administrations (1987 to 1996) Enemalta persistently insisted that the price of kerosene was so low that it encouraged abuse: bus owners mixed it with diesel and certain commercial entities used it for boilers instead of light industrial fuel. This was true, of course.

Yet, every time the issue cropped up, Eddie Fenech Adami, believing that kerosene was still used for cooking and heating by a substantial number of people in the lower income groups, used to veto any proposal for a price increase.

This increase was one of the decisions made by the Gonzi administration in its first budget and I remember telling myself that he must have succumbed to Enemalta’s commercially sound arguments.

This might have been a petty issue but it was symptomatic of things to come. As more time passed by, I sensed that the control freaks in the civil service and in state entities were often having their way – too often, in my opinion. Perhaps Gonzi could not resist a good sound logical argument and did not realise there were issues in which solidarity indicated a less straightforward and less obvious direction.

Every day I meet people with their own tale of woe stemming from the obtuse ways the civilservice does things and treats people, with some departments and government agencies being the more notorious.

Many, including different people I come across casually in the street, have often vented their frustrations with me, as a former PN minister, in the vain hope that I can do something about their problems.

I tend to sympathise with them, listening patiently while knowing that this administration’s mindset hardly allows for the possibility of a sensible way how to deal with these problems.

Today’s crop of ministers, unfortunately, tends to accept civil service advice at face value and lacks the initiative to overcome resistance and ensure that the citizen comes first.

The political harm this has done to the Gonzi administration is immense.

So when I hear that Gonzi is determined to hear, share and deal with the people’s problems, challenges and opportunities, I ask myself whether he realises the mammoth revolution needed in the way he looks at things and takes decisions in order to achieve these ambitions.

In the end, Gonzi’s acid test is not the vote in the PN general council but whether people will keep turning round in circles when faced with ­bureaucracy.

micfal@maltanet.net