Having decided not to go to the country this side of Christmas, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi is now focusing on calling the general election in February or March.

There were widespread rumours across the country on Friday that Dr Gonzi was about to call an election as soon as Parliament voted the last of the Budget allocations on Friday night. But it was Dr Gonzi himself who laid them to rest when he said, in the last speech of the debate, that Parliament still had a lot to do before the election.

According to some sources in the political arena, Dr Gonzi drew back from calling for a December election because polls commissioned by his party showed the Budget did not really impact on the electorate. Some of the sources said that from a 6.2 per cent gap in favour of Labour just before the Budget, this decreased to 5.9 per cent after the Budget.

But PN sources told this paper that Dr Gonzi had decided not to hold a December election when he moved Budget Day from 8 October to the 15th.

And the polls commissioned by PN are still being gathered, PN sources said, counteracted by opposite sources who said all that the PN is doing is tweaking the Don’t Knows and Won’t Tells to elicit more information from their responses.

The PN grass roots, shocked to the core by the rumours rife on Friday of an impending election, could thus breathe easier. At least for now.