For more reasons than one, the year 2007 is bound to be decisive for Malta.

As the government struggles to ensure that Malta keeps apace with its competitors in a globalised world, it is facing some major immediate challenges. The first is to see that the economy performs positively to ensure eligibility for euroland admission. The second is to fertilise the electoral soil as the prospect of the next general election looms larger on the horizon.

The first objective may well necessitate prudence, if not stringency. The second calls for “munificence”. Tight-rope walking will be unavoidable. Whether the Gonzi Cabinet constellation comprises acrobatic stars equal to the occasion is a subject best left to electoral opinion.

This newspaper reflected its opinion, in part, in its leading article on the very first day of this year. It declared that “it is now becoming clear that Malta needs to become more accountable as a whole, mainly due to having become a member of the European Union.”

Cloak and dagger politics

People in positions of power, at all levels, are there to assume responsibility. All too often, this newspaper editorialised, decisions in this country are taken without information being disseminated. Sometimes decisions are taken in cloak-and-dagger style, or, better still, in defiance of public consultation exercises.

All of this betrays a lack of democratic qualifications, central to mature EU membership.

For far too long, political polarisation has debilitated the Maltese body politic and, while all politicians tussled for power at every turn, those in office ruled with a carte blanche agenda.

Civil society has not yet been accorded its rightful place and status. The media often lacks access to information. It is not always easy to distinguish between those who argue from fact, as opposed to those who argue from notions, and, much more, from those who fabricate stories based on facts denied to the public domain.

Space for mischief-making

This provides space for mischief-making and for the interplay of figments of the imagination.

To the extent that it is relevant to the present and the future, this merits urgent attention because democracy thrives best on the verified truth rather than on baseless assertions or groundless speculation.

There is a clear and urgent need for the contending political factions to converge on basic issues, the most urgent of which is the recognition of electoral sovereignty and the imperatives of openness and public consultation.

Transparency and accountability must be institutionalised as a safeguard against corruption, official arrogance and abuse of office. Parliamentary scrutiny is meaningless if the machinery of democratic discipline is toothless.

When the truth is deliberately and purposely withheld by the political players and when the environment is polluted by spin doctors for their own ends, democracy loses its flavour, and fast begins to taste like hypocrisy.

Pragmatic considerations

The intensified political polarisation and the lack of consensus on vital national issues, Malta’s economic stringencies largely arising from its debt burdens and high taxation, the need to attract more foreign investment, the urgent need of a sustainable environmental policy, and the growing afflictions sustained by one and all in the tourist sector, are all very urgent problems deserving of high priority and pragmatic considerations.

They can best be tackled if there is national convergence on how civil society could be mobilised to play its sovereign role.

The electorate must be master in its own home at every turn, and not once every five years.

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