It took a long time for the government, and the Church, to realise that public opinion was very much against the plans for the extension of the St John’s Co-Cathedral Museum. But ultimately the correct choice has been made.

Last Wednesday, two hours before the debate on a Labour Party motion on the issue was due to be discussed in Parliament, the Department of Information issued a terse statement saying that the government and the Church had agreed that such a project should not divide the people, and were calling on the Cathedral Foundation to withdraw it.

A few minutes later, the foundation itself issued an even shorter press release in which it said that the project had been scrapped. The debate in Parliament on the opposition motion was also called off after short statements by Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi and Opposition Leader Joseph Muscat.

Some might argue that it was a victory for the government, which pulled the carpet from right under the opposition’s feet by announcing the decision just before the Labour Party would have made all the right arguments for such a project to be dropped.

But, when you think about it, it was the only thing that was left for the government to do. The people were against it. There were strong fears that underground excavations would have caused damage to the Cathedral structure. The project would have cost millions of euros, and although e14 million of them were to be provided by the European Union, there are certainly better ways in which such money could be spent.

The government took its time to make up its mind. Firstly, after Dr Muscat had presented his motion in Parliament, it did not agree on the day when the subject was to be debated, quoting an unwritten agreement that there should be a seven-day timeframe in between the day when a motion is presented and the day when it is discussed.

Then, it left it right until the last moment to announce that together with the Church it had come to a conclusion that the project should not proceed. The government will now say that it is one that listens to public opinion, that it does not decide and bulldoze, that it turns around when it is convinced that its earlier decision was wrong. Memories as to when the proposed golf course at Ghajn Tuffieha was changed around to a national park quickly come to mind.

But much of the credit of the decision to reverse the decision must go to the opposition, which was adamantly against the project right from the start and brought on several arguments as to why it was saying so. The Labour Party’s arguments were constructive, well thought out and justified in the circumstances, and the fact that there was a government u-turn is, in itself, a feather in Labour’s hat.

Other organisations, foremost of which the Flimkien Ghal Ambjent Ahjar, deserve a pat on the back too for the way they constantly harped on the need to shelve the project because of the damage that it could cause.

But there could be another reason why the government changed its mind. Several Nationalist MPs were publicly against the project, others spoke against it in private, and this internal conflict must have been taken into consideration by the Prime Minister when it came to making a choice.

Whether these MPs would have ultimately voted against the government will never be known, but it was a risk that the government did not want to take. So it simply chose to withdraw the project before a political defeat or even stronger opposition from the public at large.

This cannot be called a victory for the government. It was just commonsense.