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After every contest, there are winners and losers, unless it's a draw, when someone else probably loses. There's also plenty of collateral damage, or to put it less strongly, other winners and losers, when the contest is a big one. People lose money at the bookies' when a big game is won or lost, managers lose their jobs (or don't) and supporters go around with a stupid grin on their faces, or not.

Human nature being what it is, the same happens after elections, especially in places where the question of which bunch of politicians is going to call the shots is important. Generally, this is because of the way bunches of politicians conducted themselves in the past: if by and large, there's not been much of an impact on every day life, then the question isn't that important, with the converse applying. Here, politicians have their fingers in most of our pies, probably as a result of the fact that we're all so dependent on each other, it being a tiny place, so the impact of the resolution of the question is high.

Then you've got the eagerness that all these bunches of politicians show to get themselves into places that matter, making the disappointment when they don't all that greater. Putting it bluntly, as soon as the dust settles, you can spot many grapes lying around, very often of the sour variety.

Some people are better at handling the disappointment of defeat, and the disappointment of victory, for that matter, better than others. And yes, I did write "disappointment of victory", for reasons that may become less unclear if you plough on. If I had meant to write "gloating euphoria of winning" I'd have done so - luckily, by and large, the recent celebrations demonstrated that the notion of waving various combinations of fingers in the general direction of the Labour Party was less pronounced.

This is not to say that the people on the winning side, myself included, were not guilty of a certain degree of triumphalism and gleeful contemplation of the fact that some of the people we wouldn't have liked to have seen winning had, in fact, been on the losing side. We're all only human, after all.

In defeat, one's character comes out, because you don't have the excuse that you were carried away by the feeling of being a winner. Michael Falzon, then, has come through as being a tough character who knows his job, does his job and acknowledges that reality, while being cruel, is what it is. His walk across to the PN officials in the Counting Hall, with his equally supportive President, Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi, was a model of the way things are done by professionals with integrity. Plenty of disappointment, for sure, but no sour grapes, then or later.

Alfred Sant, though to a lesser degree, took it on the chin like a man too. OK, he made a few cracks about "the power of incumbency" and "media imbalance" but this was a man who had lost three General Elections on the trot, so he deserved a few parting shots at the world, I suppose. After all, he'd just decided to walk off into the sunset, this time for good. As of the time of writing this, the idea that he would do a Sinatra doesn't seem to have gained much traction, for all the hints in the Sunday papers.

"Taking it on the chin like a man" doesn't seem to be a notion with which Jason Micallef is completely familiar, on the other hand. He seems to be more of a "you win some, you lose some" type of guy. You almost get a perfect picture of him shrugging his shoulders during the interview carried in another section of the press, for all the world as if it was all someone else's fault. Far be it from me to point fingers at anyone in the MLP, that's for them to do to themselves, but it was less impressive than the way Michael Falzon handled himself, by the longest of long chalks.

Other disappointing, if understandable, squeaks came out of the Labour camp from time to time. Anglu Farrugia, who is a contender again, has been making strange sounds about vote buying and other arcane methods of winning elections. For having the lack of nous to voice this peculiar notion at all, the PN should be lighting candles for him to be anointed as Leader of the Opposition.

The most enjoyable squeaks, though, are coming from quarters that have now shown themselves up as anti-PN rather than pro anything much. Quite a few pundits in the media, whether it's on the blogs or in print, are piping up and bleating "more people don't want the PN than want it" (to govern, that is) echoing consciously or unconsciously the blathering idiocy that Sant had proposed to the world when the result of the EU Referendum had come out.

In the depths of their disappointment that their idols haven't made a material difference to the PN (it's still the party in Government) these people are ignoring the chasm in their logic. If more people don't want the PN, but the PN has the most votes, who is supposed to govern? The MLP, which even less people want? AD, with its paltry total? AzzNazz, with an even lower count? Emy Bezzina? Norman Lowell? Or are we supposed to put anyone who isn't a PN-voter in the same box, on the lines of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"? A coalition of the unwanted?

But disappointment doesn't only come as a result of losing, though it is felt so much more keenly then. After an election, it falls to the PM to do his thing and appoint his Minister and Parliamentary Secretaries. Actually, even before that, people on the winning side have to cope with their own personal results, positive or negative and it's here that the quality of the men and women concerned comes out.

Grace in defeat, and generosity in victory, is a mark of quality, and some have it while others don't. It's good to see people of stature accept that, this time and for now, it's not going to be their turn, while at the same time, it is unedifying in the extreme to see relative upstarts going around pumped up like peacocks, just because this time, they convinced more people to vote for them than for the other guy.

So it comes to pass that after the flush of victory has receded, people start to wonder what it is that the PM has in store for them. Some get the call, some don't - according to some stories, some just get the SMS. However the message comes across, it's a fact that since not everyone gets to play in the first team, quite a few people have to be disappointed.

And this is where the mark of the man comes out again. There are those who accept that in politics, these things happen and however much they are deserving and of Ministerial quality, sometimes this isn't to be. Then there are those who think that the way they are seen by themselves, by their significant others, by their supporters and, for that matter, by their dogs is the only way they can be seen and therefore the PM has no right to exercise his prerogative. It is by the amount, or lack, of foot-stamping and tantrums that we, the people, measure the players, and as far as we are concerned, at the end of the day it's the PM's decision and integrity dictates that this decision is respected.

Party discipline and personal integrity are not the only reasons why the PM's decision and its consequences, are to be respected. Some seem to think that the votes they get are their personal property. This is a notion of which they need to disabuse themselves rather quickly. When I voted, I voted for the man I wanted as Prime Minister: the choice of which of the candidates I preferred to be elected was secondary. Anyone who thinks that running alone, in the real politik of Malta, will get him anywhere other than nowhere fast needs only take a look at the votes the people running outside the real race, the one that mattered, got.

In other words, anyone who thinks that his sense of disappointment at not being elevated to High Office of State gives him even the tiniest of rights to play fast and loose had better bear in mind that being a pariah or a social outcast is not an enjoyable state.

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