Considered a masterpiece in the Western canon, Samuel Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot' symbolically captures the absurdity, comedy and tragedy of humanity's attempt to reckon with a wasteland of humanity's own creation.

The main character in the play waits for Godot, but Godot never turns up.

It would seem that we in Malta are in these shoes now - waiting for a preferred partner for the national airline. And, maybe like Godot, he never turns up.

There was Alitalia, by far the preferred bidder given the neighbourly relations between the two countries and the two airlines, but it was not to be. The Italian airline is itself in a dire situation.

So now, according to Minister Zammit Lewis in Parliament on Monday, we are back to waiting for Godot.

Some pro-government media have identified the next preferred bidder as Air China. Objectively, this looks like a wish by some persons rather than an idea meriting serious consideration.

Air China is huge, it flies to many airports in Europe and it does not seem eager to take on a small airline and help it come out of its problems.

The government, the minister said, while not disdaining Plan A, is actively pursuing Plan B, which is to continue with the restructuring of the airline and bringing it back to profit.

We agree with this approach, as we also agree with the proposal put forward by the Nationalist Opposition to open up the shareholding of the airline to Maltese investors.

Certainly, to get there, the airline needs to continue with the hard restructuring that has been going on these past years, until the airline gets back into the black and stops losing money.

There are ideas how this can be done and the minister hinted in Parliament this is what will be done.

Now that the delay incurred while talks with Alitalia were held is over, the government must take the bit between its teeth and take the proper but unpopular decisions. This will not be an easy exercise, seeing we are practically on the eve of an election, but there is no way around it. Unfortunately, for the government, the easy decisions have all been taken before. There is no other way about it now that the preferred bidder (aka Godot) is no longer there. Otherwise, the airline collapses as EU rules ban the government from bailing it out.

And if the decision is taken to open up its shareholding to Maltese investors, that is one other reason why the hard decisions cannot be put off any longer. No one would be prepared to invest in an enterprise, even if one so beloved by the Maltese as Air Malta unless it gets its books in order and stops losing money.

Waiting for Godot is thus a preferable choice for the government, for any government, but it does not work. Minister Zammit Lewis was welcomed after he made the statement with a chorus of 'We told you so'. We can repeat this now with regards to what the minister described as Plan A - to seek another preferred bidder.

But if the rest of the country is convinced that 'Waiting for Godot' will not work, then it would be altogether preferable to shift immediately to Plan B and undertake the hard, uphill, thankless task of dragging the airline back to the black. As inevitably happens in many other restructurings, it is amazing how many lessons one learns this way.