The signs have been there for some time now but they keep getting clearer and clearer.

The former prime minister and leader of the Labour Party, Alfred Sant, as stated in The Malta Independent on Sunday, sticks to his guns two years after calling for Konrad Mizzi’s resignation.

And while the prime minister has continued to defend Neville Gafa, Health Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chris Fearne has twice moved to remove Gafa from his health ministry.

The question many are asking is: is this government fragmenting?

In a way it is inevitable that after such a tremendous election victory last year, there would be some fallout and fissures start to appear even in a monolithic party as the Labour Party.

Many would probably be looking out for such cracks and fissures thinking they are harbingers of a party collapsing, but this would be just wishful thinking.

There are far more forces within the party and the government that pull together than that pull apart. Come the election, we are sure, both Alfred Sant and Minister Fearne would be on the side of the party and its leader.

On the other hand, one should not try to paper over the cracks that have appeared, nor downplay the different shades of opinion that such disagreements signify.

In our opinion, there have been rather limited internal discussions within the party over these two issues (and maybe some more) over the past months as the party came under the combined onslaught of the official Opposition and the various groups that have emerged following the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

A more open discussion and airing of disagreements would be of a benefit to fuller democracy in our country. Rather, that is, that gloating that the government is fragmenting or disintegrating, one should rather welcome the fact that even that side of the fence is now engaging in discussion on issues that are vital to the country.

It is of benefit to the country that the political discussion inside the party of government moves from straight defence against the Opposition to a more open discussion on what is being done well and what is not being done well.

As our country moves towards the European Parliament election and the local councils elections (although these do not have the political relevance of a general election) our political discourse must be elevated from the very confrontational one we have been having so far.

It would also be of benefit to the Labour Party to allow some soul-searching of what has been the party’s contribution to the country in these years of its administration.

Of course, it has to be expected, such public expressions of disagreement as we have outlined at the beginning are immediately taken up by the various oppositions inside the country almost with glee. But a mature party should be able to ride over such waves and turn the discussion into a positive one.