The man standing behind me as we lined up at a hotel lunch buffet table on New Year’s Day tapped me gently on the shoulder. A brief question, he said. Do you have a political icon? It was the first time anybody had ever asked me anything like that.

“I do not,” I replied. I never had. I try to learn from everybody I know or read about.

“My icon is Mintoff,” he said. “He was before my time, but he was a leader. He did not hold back.”

“Do you think it has been too quiet since he left?” I asked.

“It has,” he replied. “All over the world there are popular protests now and then; they are never held here. We never take to the streets any more.”

True to his word he did not engage me further. Still, he made me think.

It was not the first time that someone had come up to me and said the same thing about street protests.

Well, those who feel that way will now get some satisfaction. The Labour Party is holding a protest against the fuel price hikes announced right after January 1, making the new year age prematurely.

It will be a popular protest. The fuel increases are sharp, coming in the wake of other increases in the same areas not so many weeks ago. They arrive at a time when statistics and surveys showing many thousands in the grip of poverty are being published.

The official reaction remains that Malta is doing better than various others in the EU, that fuel prices are still lower here than in a number of countries there, that surveys and reports largely reflect perceptions of poverty, not the real thing, and that, anyway, the government prefers to utilise public funds to create employment, rather than to subsidise fuel costs.

The government is out there on its own on most of these reactions. The most cautious position has been that of the Malta Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry, which said it did not want to politicise the issue. Other business organisations and the trade union movement as a whole have been vociferous in their condemnation of higher fuel.

That the hikes came after details of the income increase ministers awarded themselves and were also accompanied by an increase in the price of (privately produced) milk, did not help.

Nor the fact that our inflation has been rising and will rise further as the direct impact of the fuel prices rise will feed into production and supply costs. That context is not a political one, it is the reality scene.

One does not and should not politicise it, true. But it is a fact that the government is not coming across as listening enough or showing that it and Enemalta are acting as best as one expects.

It is a fact that fuel prices are driven by the international price of crude oil, which has been on a sharp upward trend and is expected to rise further under short-term pressure from the weather and the long-term position taken by the major oil suppliers who feel the world economy can sustain a price of US$100 per barrel of crude.

It is also true government fuel aid to consumers, as proposed by the Labour Party, would increase public spending, though Labour will argue there are areas of unnecessary or excessive spending, outlays on a new Parliament building being one of them.

Yet other things are also true. What strikes me most, in the context of inevitable consequences from high and rising oil prices, is that the cost of fuel here is considerably higher than in Cyprus and Luxembourg.

The government, in trying to soothe consumer anger, does not offer any explanation why it should be so. The purchase cost of fuel is loaded with taxes before distribution to consumers, so direct country comparison is not always possible.

Nevertheless the government should respect the people’s pain and intelligence and offer explanations.

Are we buying oil efficiently enough? Have the inefficiencies at Enemalta been adequately controlled?

Saying that some allowance is made for them in establishing fuel prices is far too glib. Actually, glibness and lack of explanations are political factors for which the government is to blame.

It is also another fact, being revealed through media social investigative reports, that poverty is not simply perceived. Out there, where thousands of people live at or outside the margin, it is cruelly real, even denying heating to many people in winter.

It is unfeelingly crass of the government to deny that. It is another fact that public protests do not offer solutions, but they are used in various democracies to drive a message home.

It is manifestly untrue that, as the government and its spinners alleged, Labour’s protest will damage employment prospects. I should not think that Malta is to descend into an era of violent protests.

These are difficult times and, even if there are efficient fuel purchase and production, prices to consumers will still hurt badly.

But difficult times should not be made worse through an absence of openness and a caring attitude and the presence of political spin in place of full explanations and an all out attempt to minimise increases as much as is humanly possible.