With tomorrow being the first day of a new year, our attention will inexorably be drawn to the coming months and what they may bring with them to our country.

Malta is heading towards a heightened period of political agitation as the general election draws near. At the same time, however, the country is also heading towards the momentous changeover of its currency to the euro.

As things stand, there may be – nay there certainly is – the temptation for the present government to go to the country in Autumn, well before the end of its term and even before the new year comes to an end.

It is certainly the Prime Minister’s prerogative to choose the date of the election as he sees fit, although this prerogative is constitutionally based more on what is good for the nation as a whole than what is most suitable for the party.

Certainly, joining the euro will be one of the highlights of the present government, and something for which it has strived through all these difficult first years of EU membership, by reducing the deficit, reining in expenditure and expanding revenue.

To have pushed the country to make the euro benchmarks should be one of the high achievements of this government. So many other EU entrants have shied away from this uphill struggle and even though they have tried to sugar the pill and make their peoples believe they were procrastinating of their own free will, theirs was a failure made only more clear by tiny Malta’s sheer determination to be there at the first opportunity.

But to even consider going to the country before we join the euro is akin to saying to the people: look we have brought you to the doorstep of euroland, but you have to go in on your own. This would be unfair and would only tell people that they really need to fear what will come from the euro, which is higher inflation and lower economic growth, as indeed has been the experience of many of the countries in euroland.

This, as said earlier, will be one of the most difficult transitions for our people, even bigger than the transition to decimal currency in the 1970s – and that was carried out by the strong and determined Mintoff administration that was not afraid of any challenge.

The country will need a strong and reassured government at its helm to tackle the various problems that will crop up with the changeover. It cannot have a weak government nor, even worse, no government at all. And knowing, as we all do, that a general election brings about a stasis, a period where nothing is decided, where no investment decisions are taken as people wait to see what will happen, it is simply unthinkable for the country to experience the euro changeover in such a vacuum.

Malta, as has been said, has the highest cash in hand percentage of all EU countries, with a more than reasonable suspicion this is mostly related to the black economy. It is a small, open economy in a sea that will probably be rougher, due to the vicissitudes of the American economy. It is simply unthinkable to envisage no hand on the helm at this crucial passage.

It is true that, as it happened, both timelines – that of the euro changeover and that of the next election – have somehow become twisted together, and that political caution may well propose leaving tackling the manifold problems that will come with euro accession to a new government strengthened by an election victory, but that only means, come to think of it, anticipating the election rather than having it on the eve of the euro changeover.

There is happily now broad understanding that euro membership is a good thing for Malta as a whole and that the country cannot reasonably expect to flourish on its own outside the eurozone. Given this, and given the historically strong perception that bipartisan approaches work better after an election than before one, brings one to also understand that joining the eurozone in the middle of an election campaign, even if there is no issue regarding the decision as such, will be damaging to the country as a whole.

So, Dr Gonzi, if you do not think you can face up to the aftermath of joining the euro in the present state of affairs, do the right thing and go to the country now. Or else take the bit and go to the country, having brought it to the other shore of euroland. Do not do a Moses on us.