Over the past few months, we have seen countless celebrations of leadership – people being appointed, people being elected, people winning an election, etc.

But when the hosannahs die down, when the crowds go home, the fireworks are over and the new trappings are less novel, the real test of leadership begins.

For leadership is not living off the victory and what it gets you. Nor is it, or should it be, preparing for the next election. Leadership is all about doing what needs to be done, taking the decisions that need to be taken, when they must be taken, taking them well, ensuring they are sustainable, foreseeing any hiccups and avoiding them, and selling them to those who will be most affected by them, particularly those who will be negatively affected.

Leadership means risking unpopularity, taking decisions that may not be fully appreciated at the time, looking ahead, seeing ways that others may not yet perceive, opportunities that are not yet on the horizon, threats that are not that apparent.

Leadership also means looking at the big picture rather than at the minutiae, seeing holistically rather than sectorally, globally rather than locally.

Leadership also means understanding the stresses and the faultlines and doing what can and must be done to correct them so that future generations may be freed of at least this or that problem.

There are, of course, other ways in which people choose to lead, or to manage.

Some go for micro-managing, with extreme attention being given to every phase of each process, but that soon brings about huge bottlenecks and all communication beneath them soon gets frayed and at cross-purposes, as people end up doing their own thing and everything ends up in confusion. Too much tampering with the cogs and wheels of the machine also tends to make one forget the big picture.

Then there are those who attempt to be all things to all men: they hunt with the hunters and run with the hares; they sit out others’ discomfiture with barely-concealed glee, as they wait out their time in the wings for the day when they will be the ones, or so they hope, to sit on the throne and dispense favours.

There are also those who disappoint everyone except themselves by not doing much about their responsibility except the bare necessities, and as long as there is someone who orders them to and as long as no one can be found to say they did the wrong thing. Such people usually tend to take decisions when it’s too late and when the useful time for the taking of the right decisions has passed.

Such people as mentioned in the last three paragraphs may be heads or managers but they are not leaders at all. They leave the people under their responsibility worse off than when they first came on the scene. They also typically tend to point fingers and blame others, but never themselves.

A country such as Malta has its fair share of problems. Everyone has his or her appreciation of what the most important problems are: some point at the economic and social scene with the price of oil as it is; others at what is happening to the social fabric of our nation, with the rapid changes in lifestyle, family life, etc. Still others point at the never-ending flux of illegal immigrants and what this means for the social cohesion of a country that has never experienced it; others still at problems that have been endemic for years and years, such as the problems at the dockyard or now in the transport sector.

Today’s issue is full of such problems. Obviously, our readers will form their own opinions of what is and what is not important. It is equally important to form a judgment over the way in which the present government is or is not tackling them.

To begin with page one, there is the issue of transport monopolies, with many people seeming to be in favour of the government’s actions to remove the monopolies and to liberalise the sectors, even at the risk of imminent strike action. Then there is the issue of rent reform, about which the GRTU has its own opinion in favour of commercial lessors. There is the issue of illegal immigration, with a three-page spread, also covered by other papers today. It may be said that the government has no idea how to stop this human wave that is engulfing us. There is also the issue of children of single mothers with or without the question of social fraud. We should welcome further discussion on this subject. And lastly, the issue of fireworks at festas, about which so much has been said, a law has been amended, but there things lie until the next tragedy. And the vexed question of whether the parish of Msida can go ahead with its fireworks plans, even though the parish now has a new hospital on its doorstep and one of the main ambulance routes to it cuts across the path of the fireworks. The government, we report, is holding back on this issue, allowing the police to take their decisions. However, there have been two courageous stands by a journalist (unsupported by the so-called journalists committees) and the College of Parish Priests – although a total absence of any stronger action by the church authorities themselves.

In conclusion, it cannot be claimed that the government is taking its leadership seriously on each and every issue that affects national life. It may be understandable it does not want to open so many fronts at one and the same time. But yet it is doing what we have not seen for many years now: tackling long-held monopolies and tangles that have held back the country for ages. It deserves support and appreciation. If the operators in the sectors where monopolies are now being ended wanted popular support in their industrial action, there was much they should have done but, being monopolies, they never bothered. Of course.