Editorial

When the government had been criticised so severely for inaction all throughout summer, it is not surprising that it would hit back. Unfortunately, though, the reaction has been quite late in coming and it is generally weak, if not altogether surprising in both tone and content. There have been two or three ministers brave enough to defend the government's lacklustre performance but perhaps the strongest counter-attack, as it were, came from the prime minister himself, in an interview given to The Times last week.

In truth, it is painful seeing the prime minister attributing the persistent scathing attacks on his government to what he perceived as a difficulty by the press in filling its pages in the lull after the referendum and the election earlier this year. More worrisome is perhaps the fact that he, and, therefore his government, did not seem to fully grasp the mood of the people over summer.

True, it was a very long hot summer, but it was also one of the worst in years at least in terms of inconveniences that included power cuts at times lasting several hours in some places. In the months preceding summer, the people's minds had been preoccupied with the island's future. The Nationalist Party's policy over this was clear and quite convincing - the island's place was in the European Union. Labour lost itself in scaremongering, but the majority of the people shared the PN's view both in the referendum and in the election, making sure that the island will now become a member in the next enlargement in May next year.

Now that the island's future has been well secured and that even Labour have finally come round to accepting this fact, the problems the island faced in the time before the frenetic campaigning on EU membership have resurfaced with a force that has shocked many a sensitive nerve.

The prime minister should not blame the people for expecting to see their government tackling problems that have been weighing down the economy so heavily for so many years. After all, that is precisely what governments are elected for, to administer - and administer well.

It was therefore most surprising, and quite revealing too, to see the prime minister admitting in his interview with The Times that the country had only been seeking interim solutions to problems. How can the government expect interim solutions to give long-term results? Was it not the administration's duty to work for long-term solutions to existing problems?

Why has it taken us so long to reach the stage we are in today? Of course, it would be most naive to expect the party in government to talk about problems on the eve of an election. Indeed, the problems we are talking about today were not created over the past six months or so. They have been staring us in the face for years. We simply refused to upset the applecart and, as the prime minister said, in many cases we sought to resort to interim solutions.

Having collected such a long string of difficulties, the problem-solving exercise would now be more painful than if we had been more careful and sought to handle them with far greater determination than that shown in the past.

At least we seem to have come to realise now one simple fact of life. It is that no one owes us a living. Leaving all the sharp criticism and counter-criticism aside then, what counts most now is a firm commitment to tackle the national agenda without undue loss of time.