Now that Joseph Muscat has been sworn in for his second term in office while on the other side of the political spectrum Simon Busuttil tendered in his resignation along with the rest of the leadership team, the nation can sit back and take stock of the situation.

This includes us the media, or at least those of us who took a stand over the past four weeks.

Let us start with the protagonist, Dr Muscat. He has defied the unthinkable and won by a landslide from his seat in government, and not from the comfort of the Opposition benches. He has retained the astounding majority of 35,000 votes notwithstanding the grave and serious allegations hanging over his head and the heads of his closest allies.

What should that say about our electorate? The lesson we take from this result is that people still believe that the institutions can deal with corruption, leaving them able to retain the right to choose the same direction they had taken four years ago.

The economy has been doing exceptionally well and people didn’t want to change all that, so they chose to ignore the doomsday predictions and retained Dr Muscat, knowing all too well that the magisterial inquiries will not go away as yet. They also feel safe in the knowledge that if these inquiries produce enough reasons to merit a police investigation then Dr Muscat and Co. will have to leave, but not at the expense of the lifestyle they have grown so accustomed to.

Joseph Muscat must remain sober after this massive victory and ensure he addresses the shortfalls of his first legislature. During the campaign he pledged to make up for the mistakes he admitted to. One of these so called ‘mistakes’ is the way in which he tackled the Panama Papers. One needs to see if he will give an early signal along these lines when composing his Cabinet later on this week, or if it will be a case of business as usual following the substantial size of his victory at the polls.

Simon Busuttil. He took an exit 24 hours after the shocking result came out. These must have been the worst 24 hours of his life, during which he tried to make sense of a result which gave him zero credit for his work over the past four years. But Simon Busuttil cannot simply go down in history as the only leader from both parties since World War 2 who didn’t become Prime Minister. His contribution to politics and to the Nationalist Party goes far beyond that. The aggressive Labour campaign assassinating his character has seriously damaged his reputation, but people should thank him for what he represented at the helm of the second largest political force in Malta. He stood for honesty and accountability and he stood up to be counted, fearless in the face of defeat.

He surely needed to be more assertive throughout his reign as party leader but he will definitely leave behind him a better party than the one he had inherited, a party that can build on the foundations that he and the rest of the outgoing administration built over the past four years.

Dr Busuttil has been criticised for leveraging ‘corruption’ as his only weapon against Muscat. While one may understand that the over-use of a negative theme damages he who makes use of it, on the other hand let us not relegate the serious implications of the leaked FIAU reports just because Labour won by a landslide. The lessons to be learned by the PN are that the party needs to speak with its own voice, and not necessarily parrot what others dish out without taking stock of the realities surrounding a political force such as the PN. It is obliged to be a popular party without being populist.

Finally, to the media. Those of us who took a stand against corruption should not feel battered by this electoral result. It is those amongst us who decided to run with the hares and hunt with the hounds for personal and/or commercial reasons that need to be ashamed. This newspaper has always been on the right side of history and will continue to call a spade a spade. We demand that whoever is in government takes the necessary steps to eradicate corruption and the newly formed Opposition will need to work with the government to enact laws to this effect.