The  Justice Minister yesterday announced that the local council elections which were planned to be postponed for five years will go ahead as originally planned in 2015. The ones which were slated for 2017 will be postponed till 2019.

As a result, local council elections will be held concurrently with the European Parliament elections every five years. The move makes sense. It will result in money being saved and less political drama and tension. Let's face it, politics aside, as a people we go into a strange election fever every time we go to the polls. Cutting a bit of it out will not only save money, but it also might save our sanity as we would not have to endure so many election roller-coasters.

It makes absolute sense to have them coincide together. But in all this, the real winner is that the government has pledged that if the courts uphold the public's petition to call for a referendum on the issue of spring hinting, it will go ahead next year.

While the issue of local councils is pertinent and important, the perception from the general public was that there was more anger towards the government because many believed it was pandering to the hunting lobby. Some thought that the government was trying to appease them and play for time. However this declaration, coupled with the fact that the government temporarily halted the hunting season after repeated abuse, looks to have set minds a little more at east over the issue. As the PM said, it is now up to the courts to sift through what has been presented and make its decision. This newspaper, along with The Times and Maltatoday, have presented a united front against bird hunting and all three publishing houses have agreed to push for the referendum to be held.

To go back to the local councils issue, the fact that your average Joe and Jane cared more about the referendum shows that the experiment in local government has not really worked. Our local councils are highly politicised and many do not live up to expectations.

Maybe it is time to ask whether the concept can ever really work in Malta and Gozo. In larger countries, councillors put aside their political differences because they are all there to work for their locality or region. In other words, there is distance and there is a feeling of autonomy as a result which makes them more effective and collaborating to yield the best results for the village, town or city.

But what are the alternatives? We have already seen that independent candidates are the exception. They do tend to work harder if they are elected, but many who contest independently would simply turn out to be a political animal in disguise, as happened when the Labour Party did not officially contest the first election but a lot of PL supporters contested independently. Would technical committees appointed on the basis of regional voting in general elections have a better chance? Probably. But then we would hear the (political) crowd bay as their right to vote would be stripped from them. It really is a difficult one to answer. But, with the 2015 election going ahead and the referendum provisionally safeguarded, it seems that a sensible consensus has been reached.