Joe Mizzi’s worst enemy is … Joe Mizzi.

His trademark stentorian voice must have cowed people when he was in Opposition but now that he is in government rather more than shouting and casting aspersions on the past PN administration is called for. All his shouting persuades no one. He is called to deliver.

He is wrong to downplay all that PN tried to do in its time and he is not pointing out the mistakes in the PN attacks on his remit. As we shall see.

For instance, last week the PN newsroom came up with a rather long news item about traffic problems during rush hour at Attard. Nobody seems to have twigged PN sat on plans for an Attard bypass for 25 years without doing anything. Hence the traffic jam day in, day out.

Minister Mizzi is wrong when he continues with his party’s electoral barracking of Arriva as a complete disaster even though that contributed heavily to the PL victory. Now that he has had his chance, he has not brought back the old yellow buses, much though their owners would have wanted.

Let us start on an organised strategic level. The problem is there are just too many cars on the roads. This is a demographic and sociological fact: people in Malta have to have their cars and then expect the roads not to be clogged. Cars keep getting imported and there is nothing the government can do about that. Probably the rise of cars on the road will slow down when everyone over 18 has a car of his own. Do not talk to them of getting a bus. Do not, in other words, try to change people’s habits. That was a mistake the PN government fell into. But at least do not try and fob them with stupid claims it’s only a perception.

The only way a government can register progress on this issue is not by fighting against popular customs but by working along them, in other words helping make roads less clogged. There are many ways this can be done, the most significant being by replacing the biggest cloggers – the roundabouts – with underpasses. This successive governments have been trying to do with the Kappara roundabout for starters. More must be planned, which should be a welcome innovation and rather more effective than all those wonderful roads in the north done with EU funds which are swell to use to go to Gozo but useless on a daily basis.

Mr Mizzi was wrong too when he gave his reasons for not accepting Arriva’s demands. Arriva had come to Malta with a business plan, which, with hindsight, had serious flaws: it was based on the use of bendy-buses, and it had a demented route plan which made one tour half the island before getting to the destination. Then, on public demand, the routes were changed, and, under PL, changed again. It was there that Arriva made a bid for a much increased subsidy which the government refused.

We will now see the government’s negotiations with Autobuses de Leon to see what will be the outcome. It is now clear that the package that was agreed with Arriva is not viable and that things have to change. We will see whether the package this government gets with AdL is better and, in any case, if the service is any better than what we have today.

Before the system is up and running, it would be premature to express oneself. Declarations have a habit of coming back to haunt – remember Austin Gatt’s ‘buzullotti’?

Meanwhile Minister Mizzi would do well to have a word with his colleague Manwel Mallia to get more police really policing the roads. This government seems to have taken a basic decision to return control of the roads to the police from the wardens who served only to monitor who was parked wrongly or had not paid his licence. If police are to monitor the roads there is much more they can and should do to make our roads much safer than they are.