There has never been a more obvious choice than we have in this general election. Not only is it crystal-clear, but it is also in itself an invitation to the people to take what they have achieved in a mere four years of Joseph Muscat government to a higher level. This is mainly the outright objective of Labour’s 2017 manifesto.

Some people would tend to describe the nation at present as caught at a crossroads – a general election always does that temporarily to the general psyche – but in real and proven fact it is more a question of shifting into top gear for the second lap of a roadmap that has, this far on the track, already been incredibly successful. 

Indeed the choice laid out before the electorate becomes even more definite when all that is being proposed by the two major parties is analysed and put to the test in economic and real terms. We are not talking about a situation that, with the passage of time, seems more like a forbidden wilderness, but about a snap election that has found most citizens still highly aware of what things were like just four years ago against the background of today’s positive realities in the form of a thriving economy, a budgetary surplus, record employment, the lowest-ever unemployment figure in history, improved social benefits, reduced taxes for everyone, more rights to minorities and the vulnerable of society, and a huge influx of foreign investment, particualrly in manufacture, financial services, and the health and energy sectors.

In contrast, forty-eight months ago the previous administration had been caught in a hopeless quagmire of inertia, corruption, raging unemployment, a staggering economy and a gargantuan deficit over which the European Commission was inevitably prompted into holding the whole nation to symbolic ransom. How different to today’s EU-Malta relationship built on mutual trust, national and institutional pride and, most important, top-class results!

This makes the factor of credibility as the all-important card in the current election campaign. It is an issue between the last PN administration that had spent its last few years tottering at the top of a self-inflicted heap of abuse and procrastination and the Joseph Muscat administration that has delivered beyond expectations and is committed to bettering all that.

With its 18-section “L-Aqwa Żmien ta’ Pajjiżna” manifesto, the Labour-led national movement has again boldly come out with proposals that cover all fields, from the economy, education, and housing to civil rights, culture, the arts, public transport and infrastructure among many others. In so doing, it is activating further growth through sensible fiscal and economic propositions, and guaranteeing yet another social uplift that will help continue to nurture the new middle class that has emerged over the past four years during which, it must be said, poverty levels have been dramatically reduced by half.

This nation is certainly not for turning. What has been achieved in such a brief period of political time cannot be bartered for the insecurities and instabilities that the Opposition, still that same broken-down vehicle fuelled by the lust for power of the few, is offering in this election. More so when one looks at it from the perspective of credibility, in its case now rendered even hazier with the creation of a so-called coalition that seems more inclined to in-fighting than offering a real and identifiable future to Malta’s vast majority of people. 

Yet there seems to be consensus on lobbying to “choose Malta”. That's exactly what we all want and should choose:  a thriving, economically throbbing Malta as we have had for the past four years guided by a PL government. 

The choice is as clear as crystal.