The past weeks of local council campaigning provided ample scope for reflection on the management of public affairs in our towns and villages. True, it has been pointed out that only 0.8 per cent of the country's GDP passes through council allocation processes. This argument implied that, after all, it is not fruitful to attach too much importance to local affairs, a claim that presumably was also meant to deflect criticism from the PN should things go less well than they expect them to go, when voting takes place this Saturday.

Still, no matter how big or small council spending is at present, compared to the national income, local councils have assumed an increasingly strong profile in the life of our communities. The way by which they are run affects directly the quality of life of many families.

Now a curious feature of our councils is that they have an executive time span of three years. Nationally, governments are elected for a five year legislature, and some have argued that this is too long a period. In the 1960s, prior to independence, it used to be four years, which might indeed provide a more reasonable timeframe and is the British practice among others. On the other hand, three years might be considered too short as a period during which things are to get done. (By contrast, in Australia, federal and state governments are elected for three years without this having provoked much polarisation in the country at large; actually, Australian society, it is said, remains largely indifferent to political dramatics.)

During the present campaign, the focus was placed tightly on performance. One may agree or not with the percentage measures that Labour publishes of what has been implemented during the past three years, in terms of what was pledged. Yet, the general expectation has been that political parties should give a reckoning of the contribution they have made, if any, to a community's progress. A key element of Labour's campaign has been the statement, consistently advanced, that we made a real difference in the conduct of affairs, because we took pains to implement our pre-election pledges. And I think we have proved that the statement is justified in most instances.

The reason for the success obtained is the notion that local affairs too should be organised through a plan that sets realistic priorities and then carries them out. For instance, at Qormi, the Labour council listed the streets it wanted to upgrade over a three-year period and implemented its plan. Now, the programme for the coming three years is to upgrade all streets in Qormi including those at the periphery of the city. Had the pledge been three years back to do all the streets at once, as happens in most PN local manifestoes, nothing valid would probably have been done.

Similarly at Sta Lucija, there has been a step-by-step approach, on a planned basis, to convert the area back again to its original vocation, that of a garden city. Go now and visit that community and you will find stretches of greenery laid out around the open spaces surrounding the belts of apartment blocks. The process continues but it has been going on for the last few years, and will continue for the coming three years, if the community votes for it on Saturday.

There is no feasible alternative to planned action which sets out priorities, if we want to achieve set targets. Labour has been pushing this message at national level, and implementing it locally. In practice, the PN begs to differ. In locality after locality, the truth is that PN majorities have frittered away the advantages they had, by way of local popularity and easy access to the central government. Through lack of planning and foresight, sometimes through irresponsible dilly dallying, they failed to deliver on promises. Planning is not in their system and I would argue that the same applies at national level.

For there can be no other reason why projects take so long to come to a satisfactory end. At the Mater Dei hospital, at an endless count of roads that are dug up, at the quays at Cirkewwa and Mgarr, at the Park and Ride project, delays and postponements are the order of the day. Meanwhile cost overruns pile up. I still await a transparent explanation from the government regarding the Lm191 million in cost overruns that have been accumulating in the three years since Dr Gonzi became PM.

Can we go on like this? Most of the time in the conduct of national affairs, the impression we remain with is one of crisis management. Promises rain down and are consistently ignored when it comes to implementing them.

What brings some life into the resulting inertia and stagnation are the electoral timelines. We have seen this happen during the past few weeks. All of a sudden, in very quick tempo, hey, prestissimo, local projects that had hibernated these past three years under PN local management, suddenly seemed to come to life. PN mayors and councillors visited families. The Prime Minister and sundry Cabinet colleagues came to give a shake to discarded works on pavements and public gardens. The pro-government backed media splashed re-launched pledges that had already been made three and six years ago, presenting them as if they were new.

Will these shopworn tactics work this time round? We shall see. If, however, we continue with a slapdash approach that improvises far-fetched promises only to forget all about them as soon as elections have passed, the consequences could be quite serious. With such an approach, we are definitely reducing our chances of catching up with our competitors on international markets and with the living standards of other EU member states.