Apart from contingent problems and day-to-day issues, the incoming government must follow up its Great Idea, an ambitious project it intends to drive forward and on which it intends to stake its reputation while contributing in no small way to the greater good of the community as a whole.
Over the past months of the election campaign, the party now in government made much of the achievement that is SmartMalta, branding Malta, and itself in the process, in the forefront of technology and all that's hip in today's globalised world.
Since then, a month has already passed and we have not seen much of the government except to be reminded of its slim majority, its backbenchers' grumbles and its problems with Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando. It would seem that the government is finding that getting its act together a rather uphill struggle, including the not so small problem of coping with a real brain drain from within.
Even getting here, and here is getting SmartCity over here, has been a signal achievement that is only belittled by those who are just plainly jealous or who do not understand the complexity of the issues involved.
But building a Smart City in Ricasoli on its own would be just another exercise in property speculation unless it is underpinned by far more things that need to be done, and urgently. Unless immediate action is taken, SmartCity Malta will be indeed built but then it will be staffed by Indian, African and Pakistani IT experts because in the meantime we would not have taken steps to raise the level of IT expertise among Maltese students.
This is what we must focus on. Building new schools is OK, and grouping schools in colleges, but it's the end product that matters. Improving MCAST facilities is also a much-needed step in the right direction but we are not hearing much about this either.
The above is just an example: the great idea must be pushed relentlessly or it will fall by the wayside. For Dubai to get to where it is now it first had a great idea then it followed it right through, all the way. Ditto for Singapore. And Monaco.
Dr Gonzi's Vision 2015 could be just such a great idea but now it behoves Dr Gonzi to flesh it out and to drive it forward and to brook no resistance nor tolerate any foot-dragging. His team, that is, the Cabinet and also the parliamentary group are assumed to be on board with such an idea.
Obviously, politics being politics, the election campaign was not so univocal: in the end the great idea became rather obfuscated in the din of the campaign. Many commitments and promises were made and must now be kept. The country's finances, especially in these times of sub-prime fears, oil price surges, foodstuff prices going haywire, all the goodies called globalisation, must be kept in trim. It is so easy, however, to lose track of the main thrust in the welter of so many conflicting issues. In fact, one can also hypothesise that one reason why Dr Gonzi's administration shed so much support was because in the end many reasoned that Malta four years after EU accession was nothing like what they had imagined it to be.
Choosing a great idea and sticking to it also means making choices. We cannot go everywhere at once; we cannot do all that people ask us to do. Let us say more: we cannot excel in all areas. Even now, we can see how uneven and lopsided our development has become. To fulfil all that people want to do would mean to exacerbate this unevenness: many people's personal and corporate business plans are many times at cross purposes with those of others. This, too, is one other reason why a great, over-riding, unifying idea must be created and always kept in focus.
Let not this island country be for ever the land of lost hopes, of great ideas that went astray, of dreams that turned sour and of governments whose great idea turned out to be made of cardboard.
The present government has no lack of models that can inspire it: George Borg Olivier had Independence to drive him forward, and once he achieved it his government ran out of ideas. Eddie Fenech Adami had joining the EU - and he like Moses left before the Promised Land was reached. Dom Mintoff had all sorts of great ideas, not all beneficial, and he got them all, with conflicting results among the split population.
People judge by what they see, by how it hits them. Speaking to them about SmartMalta when they see the kasbah-like atmosphere of City Gate, for instance, on a daily basis will not cut ice. Nor speaking of a Malta that excels in IT only to find the government's own website showing very clear signs of neglect and shoddiness (they corrected it last week after it was pointed out by this paper). Nor boasting of a hi-tech Malta and having people queue to get an Internet connection during the election campaign only to then find Malta is one of the lowest for Internet access in the whole EU.
If there is one simple solution to all this and more, it is education, more education, and even more education. Here's something for Dr Gonzi to put in his pipe and smoke it: it is only by making huge, discernible, quantifiable, improvements in education that we can really see our people change for the better, be better equipped to take up the challenges of the coming years and to really, really realise the potential in the Smart City idea.
Smart City is a vision of excellence but a nation that does not strive to be excellent will have thrown away a truly unique and unrepeatable opportunity.