We have not had it so bad on our rock for the last 100 years. We have seen our country develop into a reasonably modern state in the European Union. However, the Mediterranean-culture present in our innate selves has not been shaken off and, despite years of progress, we are today at a crossroads and having to decide where to go again.

We may not need to shake off our Mediterranean soul because it is unique, attractive, warm and we all like it. It is the abuse of it that we do not like.

We can be a serious country without necessarily becoming like the continent.  We ought to be the pleasant state of the European Union and offer our Mediterranean pleasantries to our Continental colleagues.

Instead, we distanced ourselves from the centre. When we joined the European Union, we were the revelation of the time.  We achieved what other countries could not achieve.

We had brains representing us in the core of the EU and we promoted our cause and country so well that with all the tribulations that we presented in applying, freezing and then reapplying to become members, we were given the proud place of a full member state of the European Union. 

We may have underestimated the demands of the EU, but we have also overestimated our ability to draw benefits and abuse of our membership status. We concentrated too much on the money and less on the values side of things. 

Many of us wanted the EU to free us from certain aspects of the past and from the downsides of the Mediterranean culture, such as the lack of altruism, the fanaticism, the easy impunity, the nepotism, the psyche of state dependency, the relegation of good manners and several other woes.

Today we are at the periphery of the EU, not only physically but also in practice.

We have managed to become a sidelined country with the rebels and if we are not careful and repeat a reversal similar to the times when we froze our application, we may even lose our status as members of the union as we know it now.

The European Union is there to stay, Brexit or not.

People are entitled to have their achievements safeguarded and not diverted to a future which was not planned

The EU is founded on unshakeable, sound principles and willingness to be together and do things together and not separately.

Those who want separate are not fit to be in the bloc and we may have been doing as we please for too long to continue to be tolerated.

The events of the current and recent past have continued to undermine all that we had achieved in the last 100 years. Our global reputation is suffering too. It will be a formidable task and a magnificent governance team to return us to where we deserve to be after our efforts of the last century.  Every cloud has a silver lining and we have been hoping in recent weeks to see the current dilemma as an opportunity to be shocked back into the future that we had dreamt of and been striving to achieve over the past decades except the last.

We need to restore our future following the recent past. We can. There is a solution for every problem. 

God forbid if we continue to persist in our current ways because that will be a complete shift in the direction that we have taken in the past. 

People are entitled to change the government but they are also entitled to have their achievements safeguarded and not diverted to a future which was not planned.

Malta had set its course to a continental future and not one based on an eastern or far eastern model. Our course was set on a route of authentic and transparent achievements within the capabilities of able men, and shorn of fantasy and unfathomed strategies which leave a lot of unanswered questions about the miracle that we are told we are living today.

May the next line of leaders and thinkers of this island rethink modesty, morality and transparency and restore a sense of pride built on the sound application of ethics as they are and not as redefined for our individual advantage. 

May the next line of leaders, which are yet to show their mettle and credentials, take upon themselves this task and secure a deserved future for our glorious past.

Mario P. Galea is a non-executive director.