On Saturday, we are all called to vote in a general election that has assumed an even greater importance than that which a general election usually has.

The election has been called four years into this legislature and a year early for reasons that have not been clarified by the Prime Minister but which anyone can easily surmise.

The link between the many corruption claims with regards to the Prime Minister and his close entourage and the early poll is clear. But other aspects are not clear: faced with allegations of corruption, the Prime Minister ordered an investigation led by a magistrate. Then, without allowing this investigation to be concluded, the Prime Minister suddenly called an election.

The choice facing Maltese voters on Saturday is, on the surface at least, between the parties which are contesting the election. But the wider context of this particular election goes beyond the parties. At stake there is nothing less than the future of our country and its economy, the continued economic affluence and growth or otherwise, and ultimately the future of Malta.

These past years Malta has enjoyed growth and a measure of affluence. The outgoing government likes to boast this is all the result of its efforts. Now a ship cannot turn around on a sixpence, nor can a country, even one as small as Malta, turn its economy round from a deficit situation to a surplus one in just a matter of months.

It is true on the face of it, Malta began this legislature in an Excessive Deficit Procedure situation and is now ending it in a surplus. But the push, the trajectory, which led from EDP to the surplus began before 2013. We wouldn’t be here if we had not changed course back then.

Let us take two areas where growth has been achieved:

-         Tourism: We would not have the huge figures we have now had not the decision been taken, well before 2013, to allow low cost carriers in. That was the real strategic change which has opened up Malta to far more tourists than ever before.

-         Financial services: there has been cross-party support for Malta’s financial services sector ever since the mid-1990s. This was a small operation at the beginning but it has grown and grown over the years so that today it is so big it has its own sub-sectors. The sector is now a considerable part of the Maltese economy and its online gaming sub-sector is growing at a fast pace, and employing many Maltese and also foreign nationals.

Apart from these two sectors which have become the motors of Malta’s economic growth, the other sectors of the Maltese economy – industry and trade and agriculture – have continued on their path, registering less growth than the two sectors we spoke about. Construction has boomed mainly fuelled by the growth of tourism and of financial services and the demand for accommodation that has been created.

The elector is thus being asked to judge which party offers the best guarantee of continuity and improvement in the economy. As shown in the previous paragraphs, the growth and improvement in the economy is the result of the efforts of both governments and not, as the government spin machine makes it, the result of this last legislature.

Both parties have proposed several measures to ensure a fairer distribution of wealth and growth.

But the real issue of this election goes beyond growth. The outgoing government has been accused of multiple corrupt deeds – from pardoning debts of a person facing debts, to partisan appointments in the army and the police, to massive recruitments of partisan employees, to widespread multiple appointments handed out to backbenchers in an effort to retain their loyalty.

But the real nub has been the discovery, through the Panama Papers, that a minister and the prime minister’s special advisor had opened accounts in the very suspect jurisdiction of Panama. It would have been already bad had the prime minister did what any prime minister should so when a minister is found to have undeclared accounts in a dodgy jurisdiction. But Prime Minister Muscat did nothing of the sort, not even when urged to do so by various European Parliament committees.

This in turn has spawned more and more issues – the unknown identity of the owner of the third account in Panama, the links between various protagonists with NexiaBT and with Pilatus Bank. It has been a long and ongoing saga with the prime minister twisting and turning at every opportunity to try and deflect attention and shovel counter-charges addressed at key members of the Opposition.

The result is a very ugly election campaign which the Maltese electorate  surely does not merit. The result is also the huge threat the financial services sector is facing. Panama Papers spawned the Malta Files and these two international (as against home-grown) charges of corruption and money-laundering leveled at Malta have now brought about widespread international vilification of Malta as a tax haven where money talks.

Many of the charges (as explained on pg 5) are not true but the cumulative impact is now shaking the financial services sector which fears loss of image and worse to follow.

This is the issue that must be tackled by the Maltese voters on Saturday. At stake there is the survival, no less, of the financial services sector, the name of Malta, the people the sector employs, and future opportunities for growth.

Meanwhile we have also assisted at the breakdown of the institutions of the country many of which have suddenly appeared to be incapable of autonomous action against evident corruption.

It is only Saturday’s vote that can stop this crumbling down of not just our financial services but also of the supposedly autonomous structures and institutions which this republic has built over the years. Otherwise, the rot will go on and on and get worse.

As for the rest of the economic sectors, like manufacturing etc, they must not dream they are safe from this tsunami. If the financial services sector goes under, the other sectors will suffer too.

Only a swift and open action that nips corruption in the bud will solve matters and improve Malta’s name. The present government had more than one chance to do what is right but it twisted and turned and did not do that. Even today, it promises there will be no more Panama Papers but has not said how, when and where this will happen. Since this issue centers around Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri, the government is still resisting saying what will happen to them.

On Saturday the country is being asked to rise up to the historic task facing it.