Lawrence Gonzi can sell ice to an eskimo. He’ll tell you that the sky is purple and the way he says it, his posture, body language and gift of the gab are a sure way you’ll start believing that the sky does in fact have a purplish tinge of in it. Media-wise Dr Gonzi remains a political asset for his party but tact, prose and theatrics will not govern a country.

Moments after thousands thronged to Valletta, the Prime Minister put on a show on Malta’s most viewed programme, Xarabank.

What really got my goat was not his insistence at trying to justify the ministerial wage increase, by which time I was about to throw my TV set out of the balcony, but a particular moment where he grabbed some medical instrument, which he claims to be life-saving, used in hospital, declaring to one and all that this costs €600 and that he’d choose this expense over reducing bills.

What he really meant to say was: Since I don’t have any money I can only buy one of two things but which one should I buy? And how do you expect me to find the money to reduce bills too?

Well the answer is simple really. From the €40 million lost on the Fairmount contract which was meant to save the shipyard and did the exact opposite. From the €2.6 million paid to Renzo Piano to date for a Parliament no one really wants. From the €11 million overspent on Mater Dei Hospital. Or perhaps from the €1.1 million or so overspent on the St Paul’s Bay bypass or the €2.3 million over the budget spent on the Manwel Dimech Bridge. And while we’re at it, why not add the €560 million debts Enemalta, our sole energy supplier, is drowning in or the thousands dished out on parties, Jaguars, receptions and glossy propaganda sent day in, day out.

We would have afforded not just one but boxes of these medical instruments if we hadn’t gone for an unneeded €70 million smart meter project, or if the government were more vigilant on tax collection and not allow millions upon millions to go unpaid by God knows who. We would have afforded to build another SmartCity had the government not gone about buying aeroplanes no one wanted and which, to boot, cost the taxpayer and Air Malta around €150 million.

And last but not least, we would have had the exact price of eight of these pieces of hospital apparatus every week had Dr Gonzi not given himself and his ministers a whopping weekly increase in his/their wages.

This Prime Minister should really cut the patronising posturing about where money comes from. When you lead a government that is leaving behind an inheritance of €4.2 billion in debt and have built a reputation of spending taxpayers’ money as if there’s no tomorrow, you lose the right to go on TV asking me where the money should come from. The only thing he should do is go public, apologise for promising us “sound finances” and delivering a “hole” instead and gracefully admit that splashing out on his Cabinet friends was a huge, most insensitive and untimely gaffe. Only then will this eskimo buy his ice.