Whatever was done, however it was done, to get Bondiplus going again on PBS, not even it could help the sorry show by Lawrence Gonzi in the first of his presumably many debates with Alfred Sant.

With most media seemingly uninterested in the debate, and both sides crowing over their hero’s showing, the ordinary viewers are left with their own perceptions of the debate. But the truth is that, just like the emperor’s new dress, Dr Gonzi lost this one and lost it heavily.

The worst loser, however, as usual, is the voter, the viewer. There was no single thread for the viewer to follow: many times all he got was across-debate with both interrupting each other. No issue was followed down to resolution, not even the simple issue whether there is VAT on education and educational effort. Dr Gonzi was very wrong to try and live that out, though he was brave in distancing himself with Tony Abela’s silly sally on the Independence Day celebration. Dr Sant, on his part could have predicted the Birzebbuga video would come up but his claim it was all a silly joke did not get rid of the bad taste it left.

So where is the electorate left? Nowhere.

Nor is it left anywhere by the psephologists who would base a psychological outline to a physiognomy, a habit or a dress choice, even a wig. After all, coming to that, one could probably make a comparable argument for a psychological description of people with a parting in their hair (and this writer knows the liberatory impact of getting rid of the parting, a year and a half ago, after 58 years). But still, even that would be very reductive.

Short of tealeaves, short of drawing lots, or getting them to engage in gladiatorial combats, how is the country to decide?

One would try another way. The problem we are facing is that we have already succumbed to the logic of the two parties who both want to win and who try and make us believe that they, and only they, can govern better.

Let us turn the whole thing upside down. Let us disregard the parties and all their thinking. What does the country need?

It needs continuity. We cannot have the country turned upside down every five years, the government spending five years fishing for votes, with a mad scramble in the last few months, with spending like there’s no tomorrow, with the country living in austerity the first three years of any legislature and in fake opulence the last two.

It is not just the continuity of continuing to have a democracy, or EU membership, or such macro issues. But rather the continuity of policies, of outlook, of projects.

And also, but with heavy qualifications, the continuity of people managing things. No one should behave as if his post is eternal, but no one should be made to feel his living can be undermined by a defeat at the election, or that he will have to suffer for the decisions he took while in office, or subject to vindictive vendettas.

Having said that, of course the country needs better management than it has so far. It needs to do what it says it will do, to do it well, to do it in time, and to do it within budget. If roads are built, they must not be pulled up after a few years, nor neglected the way they have been. It was bad government to allow a hospital, even one as big as Mater Dei, to take all these years to be built and it is still not functioning. Malta is dirty, the roads or at least the most important urban ones, are a disaster, and Valletta, especially City Gate, bears a resemblance to scenes from Baghdad.

As for the much-vaunted tourism sector, this has been blessed, despite the government’s opposition, by the arrival of low cost airlines, but the masses of tourists coming still face hotels and restaurants that are shameful. It will not be through regeneration projects that the tourism sector will be cured but by proper and strict enforcement. But the two parties fight shy of this.

Having said all this, the country needs encouragement, not continuous and perennial discouragement, nit picking, the generation of suspicion in people’s minds. The current spate is poisonous and will continue to hurt us beyond Election Day.

Read what The Economist is saying about us (see page 9) and then compare it with what a Josef Cachia wrote in yesterday’s The Times: “It is an entire set of political values that is wrong, their lack of compassion, their broken promises, their failed policies, their discredited philosophy and because the quality as well as the commitment is completely absent.”

To get back to partisan politics; which one of these two views best reflects the Malta we see around us? And which one does sound like the way forward?