The need is now to regain momentum

The election campaign is now over, so is the election. Malta has a brand new government which has lost no time to getting down to begin acting in full power.

The country has ‘wasted’ enough time in speculation, anxiety over what is happening, and an interminable election campaign that took people’s minds away from focusing on their lives and their jobs.

The whole country has suffered as a consequence of this: investment decisions were postponed and strategic thinking put on a back burner.

The uncertainty is now over: this is a government that will not suffer the pangs of uncertainty as the preceding one, given its huge majority.

The country must therefore settle down and get back to its productive work. Any investment and strategic decisions must be taken and productivity must be encouraged.

There is so much to do and much time has been wasted. The rest of this year should see us all in a common effort to make up for lost ground.

There is also so much to do to catch up with other countries in the EU. Perhaps we should have been in a far better state than we find ourselves in. Now is the time to look ahead and to push forward.

This is also the time for us all to pull together this Ship of State, instead of spending our time fighting and bickering among ourselves. Malta is a very small country and it will only get smaller if our House is divided.

Last Saturday’s election, and more last Sunday and Monday’s celebrations have shown one and all this is a people that desires to express its opinion and to make its choices but it also wants to live in peace and respect for each other. There has been an impressive maturity in what happened these past days and this can only augur an improvement all around in the tenor of Maltese public life.

If we look around us we can see that many neighbouring countries are finding it very hard to take the steps, do the cuts, that are needed as they battle to control the public deficit and to cut down the public debt. We do have, as all realize, our own problems especially with the public debt and with related issues, but so far we are under no compulsion to do what other countries have had to do such as cut pensions, sack people, reduce benefits and the like.

Some controversial steps that were felt needed to be taken, like those regarding the dockyards, Air Malta and the like, have been taken and we can only move ahead. There is no one arguing now that such steps must be reversed.

Last Saturday’s election, and more last Sunday and Monday’s celebrations have shown one and all this is a people that desires to express its opinion and to make its choices but it also wants to live in peace and respect for each other

This does not mean, obviously, that there are no difficult decisions ahead. It means that the decisions that have been taken have given this country a breath of fresh air, a respite, before tackling further decisions. Those who took such decisions have unfortunately paid for the decisions taken, but that is the way it is, it always is.

The experience of past years also teaches us that the crucial thing is not to let what at first appears to be an innocuous and small change enter which in time will become a huge issue with ever-growing impacts. This happened many times in our social security decisions where decisions which at first appeared innocuous and ‘only fair’ later on became a serious issue undermining the entire economy. It is very easy to let ourselves be guided by our hearts when we should be guided by our heads.

Anyway, it is now time to hunker down and to get back to work. The dissipation and lack of concentration of the past months must give way to a renewed sense of purpose.