Now that the carcades have stopped

Silence and a normal working day has returned to Malta’s streets and neighbourhoods after the celebrations following the Labour Party’s huge win at the polls.

It is now time for the entire country to resume where it left off last week and to continue to work, produce, create and to ensure that the entire community benefits from all our work.

Obviously, the political arguments aired during the short, sharp, campaign will continue to reverberate. Now that the top brass of the Nationalist Party has resigned ‘en bloc’ there will be a thorough discussion ongoing within the party to analyse the reasons for the debacle and to identify a new position for the party and a new leader.

It is however opportune to offer congratulations to Dr Joseph Muscat and the Labour Party for the unprecedented electoral victory. This is only the second time in the party’s history that the party has won two terms in succession. And never before, in the history of Malta has a party registered a 40,000 plus majority over its direct rival.

The carcades, the noise, the flags, maybe even the sight of people taking personal risks on the backs of trucks in defiance of all health and safety considerations are all part of the Mediterranean popular culture.

Maybe, seeing that the campaign was completely acerbic, the slogans and chants used these past two days were too partisan and too unforgiving. It was time for the carcades to stop, and stop they did without any overt order or imposition.

It is now time, as the Prime Minister himself said, to bring the country back together. You cannot do this with crowds chanting and taunting on the streets. Elsewhere, in homes, at work, among neighbours, this is payback time but again the country cannot become one again if this is allowed to continue.

It is time now to tackle our problems and to seek to solve them.

Over the past weeks the financial services sector has unfortunately been in the news and many were afraid the election result could lead to some companies to leave Malta with consequent loss of jobs. The news we carry today, that one of the companies mentioned in this regard, Betsson, is staying and that two ‘world leaders’ in the sector are coming, is quite heartening.

But damage has been done and this damage must be repaired.

There are other issues in the country and they must be tackled. Certainly the clogged roads are one such issue, and the state of the environment is another. Given Malta’s dimensions, any solutions are objectively difficult.

The economy has greatly improved over the past years and Malta, till a few years ago, still under an Excessive Deficit Procedure, is now registering a surplus. One hopes this is not just a one-off and that the recent intake of people in some form or other of government service will not impinge on the rest of the country.

The election campaign, at least on the part of the Nationalist Party, focused on governance, on observance of the rule of law. Whatever the cases mentioned, (and insisting that the guilty must pay, always) the country must observe always and without any compromises the rules. The institutions the country has to safeguard legality must work.

There is a huge amount of work ahead.