Economic growth in Malta has been maintained.

The fact that this year it will be in the ballpark of 5 per cent opens up new opportunities.

In the past, it was when the economy was growing at equivalent rates that the most sucessful reforms were carried out in the economic and social structures of the island.

With care and good luck, present growth rates could be maintained for some more years.

Which then leads to the question: what should be done with the wealth that is generated?

Surely on the government's part, the focus should be on ensuring that the "greater" funds becoming available, are earmarked for public investment, which has been allowed to decline for too long.

***

Populism

In the French regional elections, the extreme right National Front (FN) has made a huge victory. It has become the largest French political party, making advances practically across the whole country.

Why has this happened?

Beyond the political agenda it has worked to, containing some very illiberal proposals, I think that the FN's  success was (and will remain) due to its having raised and discussed the big problems facing the French people in the same way that they were being discussed by the people. Moreover, it also projected in the same way the proposals it was making. Some of these are unrealistic, but they appeal to the ordinary citizen because they imply that what he/she is looking for can be easily achieved.

The big "moderate" parties either avoid having to discuss the real problems that people experience, or raise them in ways that people fail to understand, or the same parties are obligated to meet such problems by introducing measures that even when they succeed -- and often they do not -- generate more dissatisfaction.

That populism is on the advance should be unsurprising.

***

Republic

All things considered, the republic has functioned well in Malta. It is a living democracy even if the tendency is frequently to postpone time after time, urgent decisions. Which leads to a pile up of problems even as these become more complex.

Some believe that for this reason, Malta did well to join the European Union. Changes that were necessary would have been left undone or would have been implemented at too slow a pace. They were actually carried out because the country needed to comply with the rules of a continental market of which it had become an integral part.

I am one of those who are unconvinced by this argument. It is true that tough changes were introduced due to the push of EU membership but too often, they were designed according to European criteria that do not necessarily fit our situation.

Others complain about the puerility, as they see it, of Maltese public life. It is true that serious issues often get trivialised and personalised. However this happens elsewhere too, not just here. And our size is what it is. In a society where practically everybody knows everybody else, it is practically inevitable that almost all controversies turn into face to face contests.