Since Thursday evening of last week, Malta has been under a coalition government. Perhaps not a coalition in the strictly technical sense of the word, as many a pundit has gone to lengths to point out over the last week or so, but it is a coalition nonetheless.

And that coalition passed its first test this week when the freshly declared independent Member of Parliament, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, called on the Prime Minister before the government published its IVF Bill this week. That Bill, along with the anticipated Cohabitation Bill, were two specific pieces of legislation that the independent MP singled out as needing his ‘approval’ as a condition to his support for the government when it comes to division time in the House.

Since then all has been relatively quiet on issues that matter, on practically all fronts. The Prime Minister yesterday gave a second consecutive Saturday radio interview and, after having played down the government’s political strife eight days ago, he steered well clear of the entire subject matter altogether yesterday.

This business as usual approach and the Prime Minister’s insistence on bringing this legislature to its natural end, however, contrasts sharply with Nationalist Party billboards being rolled out across the country. That, however, could very well have less to do with an impending election and more to do with an attempt to counter the Labour Party’s current, and increasingly tiresome, billboard campaign.

It also runs contrary to what we have seen this week from the party in its pathetic attempt to divert attention from the problems it is facing by harping on its claim that Opposition leader Joseph Muscat had informed PN MEP Simon Busuttil just before the 2008 general election that there was to be an attack on a Nationalist MP. That attack came in the form of the Mistra ‘scandal’.

It is of course perfectly plausible that Dr Muscat knew what the Labour Party was planning and as such the question is: so what? The real question that needs to be answered is who, exactly, leaked the information to whom in the first place. We have our conjectures and information but we are not in the business of regurgitating every unsubstantiated piece of gossip that comes our way. The real source and the destination of that information, however, is a question that deserves answering.

But in this practically unprecedented state of affairs for Maltese politics, one thing is for certain − since Dr Pullicino Orlando’s resignation from the party, an eerie kind of calm has descended on the country’s politics. And that calm has not been brought on solely by the summer heat.

For after so many months of turmoil and prospective political upheaval, this loose agreement with its former MP is one positive note for the government, which has been awash in a sea of negativity it has been trying to navigate for practically the whole of this legislature.

In an interview with this newspaper last Sunday, Dr Pullicino Orlando pledged he would seek to find a way forward as a coalition partner with the Nationalist Party in the wake of his resignation from the party.

And so far, we have no reason to doubt his intentions and goodwill. For while the rift is very wide between the MP and some members of the party, he swears by his respect for the Prime Minister, and for the constituents from not one but two districts that re-elected him despite the goings on in the days just before the 2008 general election.

He vows his intentions are not to upset the applecart, to not hold the figurative gun to the government’s head nor to place the government in any particularly difficult situation. He simply says that while he can continue to work with the party as a partner of sorts, he can no longer work in the party.

All said, so far this coalition has brought a certain sense of stability to an otherwise wholly unstable situation – it was one ray of light in a very dark tunnel indeed.

But that sense of stability could very well still be undermined by MP Franco Debono, who is contesting his recent condemnation by the party’s national executive as well as his blacklisting from the party’s ballot sheets in the next general election.

That is where the wild card in the deck lies at the moment and, once again, matters stand to spiral downward should the party not find a way to hammer out the deep differences between itself and the MP.

For it will not matter one iota if the government has the support of the House’s independent MP, as the numerical problem it has faced in the House over the past months remains very much in place. The only difference is that the Prime Minister will now have to secure the backing of Dr Pullicino Orlando before it even begins considering the Franco Debono situation.

Constitutionally, the government’s term ends next spring but there is no way that the government would be able to avoid votes in Parliament until then, mainly because Budget 2013 beckons this autumn. That budget will have to be voted upon, as will each and every ministry’s budget, as well as the budget’s implementation.

Should mediation efforts, if any are indeed undertaken, with Dr Debono prove unsuccessful, it is very difficult to see how the government could expect to survive the budget votes, which of course are also money bills.

This unprecedented situation will, for better or worse, prove very interesting once the House returns from its summer recess in October.