The people have decided. A big majority – almost as big as that of four years ago – felt that what the Labour Party was offering was better and guaranteed a sounder future for this country when compared to the Nationalist Party.
The will of the majority must prevail though the wishes of the minority cannot be ignored either. The country has the government the people want.
Just minutes after it became crystal clear Labour was the winner, Joseph Muscat said the people had opted for positivity and that the electorate had voted on the basis of what their minds rather than what their hearts dictated.
He said Labour must learn from its mistakes and strengthen the good achieved over the past four years.
Dr Muscat’s administration had a number of achievements to its credit: sound economic growth and the third lowest unemployment rate in the European Union, to name just two main indicators.
The Labour government had the wind in its sails until the Panama Papers a year ago, and, more recently, details about investigations by the government’s anti-money laundering agency cast dark shadows on the Prime Minister himself, not because he was directly involved but because he failed to take the bull by the horns.
Those shadows still loom on Dr Muscat and his new administration. The electoral victory changes nothing of that because magisterial inquiries probing certain allegations continue and the recommendations made by the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit remain unheeded or, rather, not acted upon.
Dr Muscat and his new Labour administration, therefore, still have huge challenges ahead. That is why this newspaper spoke of “a recipe for disaster” in an editorial it ran on May 2 criticising Dr Muscat’s decision to call the election almost a year before it was due.
It had commented that, in the event of a Labour victory, which is what happened, “the temptation… would be to think that the electorate has endorsed Dr Muscat’s performance and all is forgiven. He will probably claim he has learnt from past mistakes – he does that often – and will try to do better”.
Dr Muscat cannot waste any time if he truly wants to mitigate the self-inflicted damage of the past months. He said yesterday his first job would be to unite the country and that he would be extending a hand of friendship to those willing to work for the good of the country.
He must surely realise that among the many thousands of those who voted for his party on Saturday are quite a few who would still be willing to say that he was weak when he did not demand Konrad Mizzi’s and Keith Schembri’s resignation. They feel that such inaction led the party to have to dump almost a whole year in government as the Prime Minister had to call a snap election to deal with a festering wound before gangrene set in.
So, even if Dr Mizzi has a good showing in this election, as is very likely, and Mr Schembri may be credited with securing another electoral victory for Labour, they continue to be an albatross for Dr Muscat.
How Dr Muscat behaves in their regard will go a long way in determining how smooth the next five years will be for him and his government.