The winner takes all. ‘All’ meaning the lot, lock, stock and barrel.

In Maltese circumstances, this is not so much a benefit as a problem, or rather a burden.

‘All’ means there’s no time to rejoice, or gloat, or rest on one’s laurels. It means responsibility.

In fact, if there is any lesson that history can teach us is that it is a foolhardy leader who, having won, proceeds to rub his opponents’ faces in the mud. The winners who left a name in history were the ones who did not even celebrate victories and went cautiously about their business, trying to heal, trying to bring together, not riding roughshod over the vanquished.

Whatever they may say, Lawrence Gonzi has been the big winner of the past harrowing months. He has seen off possible contenders, outpaced disgruntled MPs who now find out that for all their sabre rattling, they will not bring down the government. He has even allowed himself the luxury of cocking a snook at public opinion and keeping a small Cabinet.

But there is a limit to everything. He must now shed the garments of victory and put on those of humility. That he clipped the wings of the most antagonistic and arrogant of the people around him indicates he already knows this is what he must do. The time has now come to put content in this direction.

There are many levels at which this can be played and today’s protest march points us along the way to the rates charges. But I do not intend to speak about this today. There is still a subject, near to Dr Gonzi’s heart, where the need for humility and responsibility has never been greater and where the timing is very pressing: the Renzo Piano plan for Valletta.

The whole country has been around this debate for the past months now and everybody has his own opinion about the whole concept and about its significant parts. Somehow, the whole country has got the message there is an urgency about this project, which urgency has nothing to do with the fact that for 60+ years we did nothing about it, but rather because this government is decided that come what may it intends to do it and finish it by the time its time is up.

That translates into a reverse kind of timetable: the plans must be pushing Mepa like there’s no tomorrow and by April, which is just a month away, we have been promised that the hoardings would be up and the work begun. Now Mepa takes ages about any and most applications: I still have to see it discussing such complicated plans and approving them in one half-day meeting.

Over the past months, while the debate raged all over the island, Dr Gonzi has stood firm, just as he did on the unrelated matter of Cabinet changes. But this is no Cabinet-making matter. Cabinets come and go but we have been stuck with a hideous City Gate for 40+ years and an Opera House ruin for more than 60. More than finishing the work in time for the election, what matters will be to ensure we get it right and that it will be a source of collective national pride for many, many years to come. We owe it to our children, if not to ourselves.

This is where it gets tricky. I think everyone understands that the Renzo Piano plan cannot be broken down to bits so that we can play pick n’mix with them. Maybe there was a time for that, but no longer, at least that is what I feel many seem to be saying.

Nor is there a real issue with placing Parliament at City Gate. That site has always been built-up and having a plaza at the entrance did not really work – especially when that plaza became a parking lot.

Even so, I still feel there were alternative sites for Parliament that were not really looked at carefully. Building over the Main Guard could have been ideal, but it would have also meant building over Strait Street and thus distort the whole streetscape of that part of Maltese heritage (much as we would like to forget it).

I had suggested taking over the National Library and many thought it sacrilegious. It’s not. First of all we need a huge national library anyway as the one in Valletta is too small let alone the one in Floriana. And the huge hall is perfectly suited for a Parliament.

It was not to be. Maybe the new Piano Parliament will suit what we today call Freedom Square.

There has been other comment on the modernism of Piano’s designs from people who think Valletta is uniformly baroque. They only have to look at Palazzo Ferreria across the road (and also at the Anglican pro-Cathedral, the Valletta Market, the Law Courts and so on) to understand that the Valletta we love is a mix of architectural styles.

There has been more adverse comment about replacing the ugly Gate with a slit in the wall. Archaeological and historical purists have written tomes about gated cities that should remain gated, forgetting that different administrations have driven a coach and horses (oh well, buses and vans) through that gate. Castile was turned from a backwater to a key entry point by slicing through the bastions near the Lower Barrakka Garden like it was made of cheese.

The reintroduction of the original narrow bridge is a nice touch, reintroducing the original feeling of crossing over the ditch. But, the slit? This is one area where we probably have to trust Piano’s creativity or not at all.

The digging up and the removal of the road over City Gate (Pope Pius V Road) surely complicates the entrance to Valletta since most of us use that route. This issue, along with the very important issue of providing more parking space (it’s probably not enough to enlarge the CVA Park & Ride) and more fundamentally providing rapid means to get people inside Valletta possibly without having more cars clogging up the city more than they do today, all need solutions which are not to be found in the Piano plans yet. Without them the Piano plan cannot work. Some solutions are urgently needed and they need time to be thought out and fleshed out. And to be accepted.

But it is the Opera House issue that is paramount. People would generally accept the rest of the Piano plan but the level of opposition to a ‘roof-less’ theatre is huge. By coming down the plane from Paris and announcing, to all and sundry, that the Piano plan ‘stands as is’, the Prime Minister risked being perceived as arrogant, impervious to criticism, and a philistine. The opinion of the cultural elite should matter to the head of government, at least when key figures around him have publicly criticised it.

Wisely, Dr Gonzi has not pooh-poohed the criticism, like his predecessor who questioned the raison d’etre of intellectuals at the university, thereby pushing Malta’s intellectual progress into reverse. Wisely, he has said he still needs to hear from the art elite.

Many serious arguments have been brought up regarding the ill-advisability of an open-air theatre, which will of course receive not just rain, dust, wind, but also the sounds and noises of the city and the surrounding parishes.

Even more serious have been the claims that Malta lacks a real national theatre with enough space to handle operatic productions, concerts, and plays. The Manoel Theatre is too small, and the recent changes at the back seem to have wrought havoc with acoustics. As for the Mediterranean Conference Centre, its hall is a covered-up courtyard, its acoustics horrible, its stage narrow and wide.

The Opera House site, even if, conceivably, it were to be roofed, would still be too small to house a modern production, opera and drama, let alone a symphonic concert.

On the other hand, to give Sig. Piano his due, the concept and model of his open-air theatre gives it a weightlessness, a fragility otherwise inconceivable in stone. It will never function as the national theatre, as its predecessor used to be in the 1930s – only city people went in those days, today the potential audience could come from all over Malta, if not Gozo as well, and also from abroad if we market it well enough.

This is where Dr Gonzi must show the responsibility of power. He has the power: of that there can be no doubt. But power must be linked to responsibility. He has not been given power to ride roughshod over people’s opinions or objections. Nor can he succumb to the temptation, potent in so many people with power, of conceiving an idea and going along with it and hang the consequences.

Maybe, on the other hand, to put a lid (sorry, roof) over the Piano plan for the theatre would seriously distort all that Piano intends for the site. We Maltese are famous for that: if anyone studies the original Grognet plans for the Mosta church, it emerges as quite different from what we have today: the original plans are more in the Grand Palais tradition whereas the stone reality is squatter. Do we seriously want to go down that road?

But what if the Prime Minister were to agree with the critics that yes we need a national theatre and this could well be the next phase. Studies must first be conducted on the feasibility of the idea and what kind of dimensions would be needed. Then let us have a battle royal on its location in this crammed island, with enough space, enough parking, enough ancillary facilities.

I have an outrageous, sacrilegious, provocative, blasphemous suggestion to make: what about Ricasoli, that old almost derelict film-set across Grand Harbour? It occupies more or less the same area as the Sydney Opera House in Sydney Bay. Can anyone imagine fleets of boats and water taxis crossing Grand Harbour to a first night?

Enough dreaming: what needs to be done must be done delicately, with due respect to people who do not agree, with due consideration of their ideas. In time, maybe, the people of Malta could well come to like what will be the end result, much like the Parisians with Piano’s Pompidou Centre and IM Pei’s pyramid at the Louvre. There is no need to get everyone to agree with the plans, but there is no need either to kick dust in people’s faces and impose your will just because you are on top.

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