Winning and losing is a part of our daily lives. Sometimes we win, some­times we lose. When we win we feel proud, great and, perhaps, too confident. When we lose we feel down, lost and demoralised. Nevertheless, winning and losing should never be taken as if they are the beginning or the end.

Winning rightly boosts our life but it can also make us think that we are invincible for a short while, which is understandable. The biggest mistake one can make is thinking that because in the past one had a series of lucky strikes, one will keep on winning all the time.

Losing, on the other hand, may seem to place us in a dark place of discontent and failure. However, it has its benefits too and, in the long term, these benefits will surface because losing has the power to make us realise where our faults lay and correct them accordingly. Winning simply does not have that kind of ability. In fact, many times it produces the opposite result.

The Maltese political arena is mainly formed by two parties – the Labour and the Nationalists – meaning that one party and its supports will either triumph or fail at the polls every five years.

This condition, apart from the physical and psychological stress it produces on each fervent supporter of the party, has also an equal effect on the whole country as it gives rise to strong emotions that one does not usually experience. It is just like experiencing an earthquake every five years, which may leave many people perplexed, uncertain and disorientated.

We, as a nation, are momentarily living one of such uncertain moments. Uncertain? Of course it is.

Parliament has been in a frozen mode for a number of months due to the Government’s inability to settle its own ‘internal’ issues. So, surely, this qualifies as an uncertain political situation. In fact, this year we saw the Government losing one of its members to an independent seat and another who reiterates his rage against the Prime Minister and Cabinet on his blog on a daily basis.

This is certainly not a stable scenario. The people did not vote for this type of circus and, certainly, they do not deserve it.

Those who think that prolonging the inevitable will give them time to breathe will eventually discover that the harder they try to remain afloat, in such situations, the harder will their fall be. The present situation in Parliament is truly unhealthy, especially for a country that is run by a Government that continuously tries to remind us about its democratic credentials.

Well, truly democratic politicians will always think of the interest of their country and their people first rather than the interest of their party. In our situation, the Prime Minister is obviously doing the latter. There is no other way one can look at it. Let me explain why.

We have had the longest parliamentary summer recess in history, stretching well over two months. ‘By coincidence’, just before that break we also had the Government losing two important men in its team in two successive parliamentary motion votes. One was a high-ranking public officer and the other none other than the Justice and Home Affairs Minister.

Adding spice to the pudding, this year was a complete disaster for the Government from a parliamentary point of view.

Let’s not forget the many spins we saw in Parliament during voting time and other crucial votes that were either saved by the Speaker of the House or by some despicable manoeuvre.

We had Franco Debono, for his own good reasons, going on the warpath with the Prime Minister and those in the Prime Minister’s circle of trust. To be fair, this saga did not start this year but had been ongoing for the past three.

Then we had witnessed a member of the backbench, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, leaving the party and declaring himself as independent parliamentarian. He demands to be consulted on every issue the Government decides to pass through Parliament.

We now have a series of upcoming money Bills (the Budget), where even reputable foreign rating agency Fitch noted signs about this not going through Parliament. Once again, to me, that surely qualifies as an unhealthy uncertain scenario.

To the Prime Minister, it is perhaps a normal situation but for the rest of the populace, including the business community, that is surely not the case. The way in which he is behaving in this worrying situation, the Prime Minister is only exposing more of his real intentions, that of latching on to the seat of power.

I would just like to remind the Prime Minister and his coterie that we are all mere mortals and not immortal gods.

Mortals are anything but perfect. In fact, losing is part of that imperfection. So, in that same sense, down here, nobody wins them all.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.