Having obtained the great majority of votes at the Nationalist Party general council, in a contest that was really no contest at all, the Prime Minister returned to Parliament facing the same old challenges and uncertainties.

He remains a weakened Prime Minister, fearful of pushing his own laws to a vote, fully aware of the lingering possibility that they might need the Speaker’s cliffhanging casting vote, time and time again, thus protracting the political uncertainty much to the detriment of country’s social and economic well-being, unless of course his unpredictable rebel MP decides to go the whole hog and forces an election before its time. The Prime Minister is clearly unwilling to test his parliamentary majority because he is not confident that he has the authority and the support to pass legislation. He knows that surviving confidence motions is not on its own an automatic guarantee for future governance.

He must have been advised that the unsafe passage of ordinary bills also constitutes a threat to his continued tenure of office. For him to be able to execute his mandate and his electoral manifesto he needs to have the ability to change and amend laws. If his rebel MP behaves in a way that will stall the passage of ordinary legislation through Parliament, Dr Gonzi will face the same predicament and risks losing his authority and ability to govern in much the same way that he would lose both in the hypothetical situation of losing a confidence vote.

The bottom line is that the renewed confidence expressed by the PN general council in Dr Gonzi’s leadership has harnessed little, if at all, his authority over his parliamentary majority, a fact that lends credibility to the Opposition’s consistent belief that the problem lies in Parliament and not within the Nationalist Party - no matter how hard Nationalist strategists labour to transmit a business-as-usual feeling.

Ultimately Dr Gonzi remains at the mercy of Dr Franco Debono who must be relishing the prospect of being unofficially the Prime Minister at this particular point in time. He has doubtlessly demoted Dr Gonzi to the role of an administrator rather than a governor, now that it is clear that Dr Gonzi is unwilling to put his own laws to the vote.

We have all noticed that debates on current draft legislation in the plenary are postponed immediately before the ministers proposing them pass on to wind up the debates in an obvious bid to avoid them going to the vote.

The strategy amply demonstrates that the Prime Minister is terrorised at the prospect of needing the crippling casting vote of the Speaker each and every time he tries to pass legislation or, worse still, that he might have to face the nightmare of watching Dr Debono voting with the Opposition on a piece of legislation, thus losing his majority and in the process re-intensifying the current political uncertainty.

The current political crisis comes at a time when the Nationalist Party just earned a drumming at the local elections. Doubtlessly this government is living on borrowed time and there is little to demonstrate that there is light at the end of the tunnel. The prospect of an early election is now gaining currency.

It is not a question of if but rather when.