The Prime Minister’s announcement that the next General Election will be held approximately a year from now, more specifically, around March of next year is welcome news for a number of reasons.

Primary amongst those reasons is the fact that it puts any and all undue speculation and the uncertainty that comes with such speculation, to rest.

It provides the people a certain sense of security that the election will be held just about five years from the last election, and in so doing it has provided a target date that has been more or less etched in stone – barring, of course, any extraordinary circumstances.

The electorate, the country’s politicians and its political pundits now know with a certain degree of certainty that the country will head to the polls in about year’s time, in the first quarter of 2018.

Rumours of a General Election are always near as the legislature begins to wind down.

The next General Election can technically be called anytime up till June 2018 but there have been many out there who have had a distinct feeling that an election may have been called earlier than that.

Many are the theories that have done the rounds lately, and many of those theories have suggested that an election may have been called this year, in 2017, as opposed to sometime in the first half of 2018.

One possibility that has been doing the rounds of late was that the country could have been treated to an early election sometime this summer, should the government perhaps feel it is riding high on a wave of popularity in the immediate wake of the country’s EU Presidency. But as the reality that the EU Presidency will not necessarily earn the government that many brownie points with the electorate sinks in, that prospect is become more distant.  Another possibility was that an election would have been called this autumn, in the immediate wake of an electorate-friendly budget.

But Dr Muscat’s announcement this week that the election will coincide quite neatly with the end of his first legislature puts all that speculation to rest.  And this is a good thing. 

It is common practice for the country’s businesses to postpone crucial decisions – such as decisions on hiring, expansion and investment - until after an election, fearing either the accompanying domestic consumer uncertainty or the new policies that a new administration may bring with it.

And since the decision on when, exactly, a General Election is called rests solely at the Prime Minister’s discretion, and since those cards are traditionally held very close to the prime Minister’s chest, there is always a great deal of uncertainty not only on who will assume power in the wake of a General election campaign, but there is also the added uncertainty of when, exactly, that election will be held.

That speculation and that uncertainty has now been cleanly nipped in the bud, at least for the time being.