The public transport reform has not worked. Full stop. This is the time to be clear and to face up to facts: The public transport reform has not worked and is not working. There can be no playing around with the facts, no spin. This was a great gamble by the government and it has not worked.

We say the public transport reform has not worked, not that Arriva is not working, for the blame must be laid squarely at the foot of the government which oversaw the change and which boasted so much about it before it all fell flat.

In effect, the government nationalised the public transport, took it away (bought it) from the people who used to run it and created a new modus operandi.

It not only chose the operator but also laid down the system, the multi-modal and interchange system which in the government’s eyes would revolutionise the way we travelled.

We say the government in effect nationalised the system, for it did not just issue the contract and tell the operator to run the service. It also told the operator what routes to implement, what frequency, how to interchange, etc. That is why we say it nationalised the system: It is the government which is running the system and this system has failed to match up to expectations.

The complaints one hears or reads about regarding the new service ever since Arriva started are just the tip of the iceberg. Many people grumble but do not write to the papers. Many people arrive late at work and they know they were let down by Arriva but they only react by leaving home even earlier the next day. They know it’s all a mess.

The failure of the new system can be gauged even better by the increased amount of cars on our roads as people have found that there is nothing that beats one’s personal car. So instead of getting people to leave their cars at home and travel by bus, this so-called reform has had the opposite effect: It is making more and more people use their car.

We can see the new system has failed when we consider the buses following each other on our roads, each with very few people on board. The people have voted with their feet.

Arriva reacts by putting even more buses on the roads, hence clogging even more the streets, when it was supposed to do the opposite – take buses off the street. It is bringing even more buses to Malta, hence adding to the traffic-clogged roads.

The timings are not kept and just cannot be kept for the buses inevitably get caught up in the gridlocked streets. Hence empty bus follows empty bus and you can wait for a long time on a bus stop for one to come... and then two or three come almost together.

In our view it is only the government’s fault that the system has failed. For the government tried its hand at something it knows it does not do well; it tried to run a system, when it is there only to regulate. It was the government which, praiseworthily, did away with an old and derelict system but it should have stopped there. Instead, it identified itself far too much with the new system so that people today blame Austin Gatt more than Arriva.

There can be, perhaps, no better image of the total failure than the sight of people waiting for their bus in the lashing rain these past two days at City Gate. For this government, hijacked by Renzo Piano, has made everything without a roof – a roofless theatre, a roofless City Gate and now a roof-less terminus. That too, and the hurried addition of new bus bays, are signs of panic by a government that knows it has boobed.

There must be consequences to all this. Prime Minister Gonzi over the past days has urged humility, and he’s right, but it is the government that must pay for this mistake.

The issue, the only issue, in these hours is whether a generic apology is enough or whether it is enough to order the system back to its Valletta-centric system.

There is then the not-inconsequential affair of the debate coming up on Friday and the related issue of what will one single MP do. The debate and its vote, and the behaviour of single MPs, do matter, but they do not exhaust the issue: The real issue is the government versus the people. Now that the government has boobed, it is up to government to ensure it gets it right.

However, as regards the debate and the vote, any MP can express his or her opinion both in private and also in public. As to a government MP backing (or even abstaining) on a motion proposed by the Opposition, that is quite another matter. In Britain, for instance, it has long been the practice that any Parliamentary Private Secretary (roughly the equivalent of our Parliamentary Assistant) who votes against the government is removed from PPS. In a parliamentary democracy an MP does represent his constituents but he also represents the party in whose name he got elected.

Fundamentally, however, the issue is not about Franco Debono, but about Austin Gatt. Dr Gatt has some soul-searching to do before Friday. Waiting for the outcome of the debate and vote may, in the end, prove to be fatal.