As the newly-elected local councillors turned up in their best suits at the main door of Castille to take their oath of office, and as one of the OPM’s offices was turned into a store for the drinks and finger food for the ensuing reception, the Prime Minister was back at his desk, trying to cope with a mountain-load of work awaiting his attention.

Every few seconds, his mobile and his inseparable laptop would ping with an incoming message. It was only later that the real import of such a load of incoming messages was made clear.

The 8 March election victory means far more to Lawrence Gonzi than meets the eye. Starting the election campaign he was clear on more than one issue: other countries that had joined the EU changed their governments immediately afterwards. So too did those countries that joined the euro. In the case of Malta, as Luxembourg PM Claude Juncker told him when congratulating him, this made the election result even more remarkable.

To which one could also add the low level of support the Nationalist Party enjoyed at the polls at the start of the campaign.

Refreshed by a short week’s holiday, the Prime Minister was back at work trying to deal with the thousand and one issues facing the new government. “I spent whole days planning the government’s work,” he told me, “in order to get the most out of the coming legislature.”

As he had warned many times throughout the election campaign, Malta faces big economic challenges. As we spoke, the price of oil rose from $106 to $107 a barrel. As was outlined in a Eurostat press statement early last week, Malta has been the hardest hit by the rise in cereals and food prices in the eurozone.

“It is very important for Malta to keep its macroeconomics on the same levels attained in the last legislature, as this is the best way to continue attracting foreign investment and new jobs,” Dr Gonzi said.

Over the past days, he asked Finance Minister Tonio Fenech to provide a series of indicators on the financial situation of the Maltese economy.

An NSO press release, earlier that same day, had published very positive figures on the state of government finance. It pointed out there had been a significant increase in revenue from Income Tax in the first two months of this year.

“This,” Dr Gonzi said, “is very good news since it is in 2008 that the Maltese population starts to benefit from the Income Tax cuts announced in the Budget.”

It also seems, that contrary to what happens usually, the election did not slow down the economy. Usually, when an election is in the offing, the country goes into a three-month hiatus, but this time it does not seem to have happened at all.

The NSO government finance figures also state that government expenditure also increased and that this was due to the social spend, such as pensions and free medicines.

“If we are careful,” Dr Gonzi added, “we should also manage to keep the main targets for this legislature, especially the last two years that will see Malta with a budget surplus. This is one of our key challenges and I am reasonably certain we will get there.”

In other words, the economy seems to be doing well and the main signal to be given is: Steady as she goes.

This, barring unforeseen circumstances, could enable the government to keep its electoral commitments. The government, Dr Gonzi said, intends to keep its clear commitment with regard to Income Tax as from the 2009 Budget.

The present government, Dr Gonzi added, planned this commitment very well: it planned to recoup what it would be giving out within two years through increased growth in the economy.

Over the past two years, the government has cut back on Income Tax and each year it has succeeded in increasing revenue rather than decreasing it. The Income Tax cuts promised in the election campaign would cost some Lm20 million (e47 million).

Key priority: the environment

Politically, the main priority of the new government is tackling the environment issues including, and especially, reforming Mepa.

Over the past weeks, as the Nationalist Party leadership met people who seemed reluctant to vote for the present government, one issue kept coming to the fore in most if not all meetings: complaints about Mepa.

And ever since, in mid-campaign, he committed himself to keeping Mepa within his ministerial remit, he has been inundated by e-mails and other means of communication all to do with complaints of one sort or another regarding Mepa.

Some complain Mepa did not approve their applications, others that Mepa took too long to process their applications while yet others complain about applications by other people that would intrude on their own quality of life.

Having listened to all these complaints, and replying to each and every e-mail he receives, Dr Gonzi insists he is not turning himself into a one-man Mepa, nor does he intend to substitute or overrule Mepa. In all cases, he tells his interlocutors to go by the Mepa rules and complaints procedures.

Yet he will immediately start meeting the top officials of Mepa and in the coming days he intends to consult as much as he can to arrive at the right and needed reform of Mepa and to establish better procedures.

Although there is still much more consultation to be done, he feels he has the right macroview in his head; the problem is getting it right at ground level.

In other words, some people might perceive Mepa as being corrupt when all it boils down to is they were not properly informed by their architects that their applications had no chance of being approved in the first place. In his personal experience too, most of the officials he has met have come through as honourable people, rather than the corrupt, easily bought officials that a certain kind of political dialogue makes them out to be.

The Gonzi government has four principal aims in its Mepa reform: transparency, accountability, efficiency and enforcement.

For all the clamour for Mepa reform, the structures for applications and their processing in Malta is far more transparent than it is in other countries. It can also be that some of the most recently introduced innovations in transparency, such as in accessing applications, are too new to be known and used by everyone.

Apart from the Mepa reform, the priority being given to the environment also includes tackling the huge deficit in waste management, the regeneration of landfills beginning from Maghtab and introducing new ways of managing the environment.

This in turn impacts on two other areas: tourism and local government.

With the local councillors milling outside his door, waiting for him to attend the swearing in ceremony, Dr Gonzi said that 15 years after the introduction of local councils it is high time to re-evaluate the whole concept of local government and to get local councils to be far more pro-active than they are now in tackling environmental issues so as to ensure the citizens have a better quality of life than they do now. This, in turn, can only help the tourism effort.