The strike by petrol station owners has been called off, at least for the time being. The stakeholders – the GRTU, Enemalta and the government – have held healthy discussions over the past few days and they have agreed to continue them after the end of year festivities.

It is not the intention of this leader to deal with who is right and who is wrong. It is a complex situation, and it will take some effort to reach a compromise. We do hope that this is reached in the shortest time possible for the benefit of all.

What we would like to point out is the way some people reacted to the news that filtered through on the possibility of a strike by petrol station owners. Although several days remained between the announcement and the date of the strike (then cancelled) many chose to queue at petrol stations to fill up their tanks. Most of them bought more petrol or diesel than they usually do.

Perhaps they did not realise that so many days needed to pass for the strike to take place that they would have needed to refuel anyway. But, no, they did what so many do in the circumstances – they panicked. They phoned up their relatives and friends, posted messages on Facebook, and simply tried to instil their panic in others.

When are we going to learn to take things more calmly?

It happened many other times before – that news of a possible strike by petrol station owners led to so many turning up to refuel that petrol stations ran dry. Sometimes we had a national crisis because of this kind of behaviour.

Thankfully, this time round it was only a minority of people who acted this way. The rest understood that the situation was not delicate and that there was enough time for it to be sorted out.

And in fact it was.