French President-elect Nicolas Sarkozy chose this country to spend a few days of rest, arriving here less than 24 hours after he beat Ségolène Royal in the presidential election. After months of electoral campaigning, he chose Malta to spend some time with his family as he prepares to be sworn-in as the new French President on 16 May.

Whether he did have his rest, with all that happened in France since the election and with so many journalists and photographers trying to find the best places from where to take pictures of the yacht he was staying on, and to get some comments while he was jogging, is questionable.

But he did stop to converse with both local and foreign media on his last day here, and he did so with courtesy and a smile, even patting one of the local journalists on the back as he jokingly told her that the only problem during his stay was that there were too many journalists around.

But Mr Sarkozy knew that this was inevitable. He has just won the election to become the president of one of the most powerful nations in the world, and it was to be expected that the international media focuses its attention on him.

It wasn’t the case of a president or prime minister taking a break from his or her normal duties halfway through his or her term. It was the case of a man who chose to go on holiday right after winning an election and before he is sworn in as his country’s new president.

Malta “benefited” from Mr Sarkozy’s decision to come here for his brief holiday. With the presence of the international media on our shores, Malta had a fair share of publicity over the past few days, mostly in France but also all over Europe, which now awaits a fresh chapter in French politics that would, by and large, also affect European politics.

Visits by personalities like Mr Sarkozy are of great importance for Malta. By being mentioned in a positive way in the international media Malta gets a kind of exposure that will help our tourism industry. The fact that the days spent here by Mr Sarkozy turned out to be beautiful spring days of warm sunshine, clear skies and calm seas – and these were captured on footage and in photographs shown all over the world – was a bonus for a country that always promotes the weather and beautiful scenery as part of its characteristics.

One will recall that when the presidents of the United States and the Soviet Union – George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev – met in Marsaxlokk in 1989, Malta had been hit by a rare storm that seemed to want to belie to the whole world that our country enjoys a mild climate, a real pity when all the world had its eyes on us. But that was another story.

There have been other occasions in the past, when Malta received so much exposure in international media, that served our country well. The two visits by Pope John Paul II and the holding of the Commonwealth Heads of Government summit, with Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth also visiting Malta, were examples of what exposure Malta can obtain in the international media.

To a lesser extent, even visits from famous football teams, particularly those coming from Italy and England, and the holding of concerts by internationally-renowned singers help to put Malta on the map.

All these events with an international tinge that take place in or involve Malta probably are more fruitful in terms of promotion for the country than paid adverts on foreign television stations and newspapers.