Perhaps the best analogy could be a meteorological one: the scattered clouds we have seen in the past two days are the clearest sign that summer and its heat are over.

News from neighbouring Italy tells us the first autumnal storms are approaching.

Likewise, over the past days there have been increasing signs that the coming election has really penetrated into people’s consciousness. We haven’t had this for a long time but nowadays you hear or at least sense that people are switching into election mode.

In the coming days, with the first mass meetings coming up, the tempo will increase.

The long stand-off in the governing party between the Prime Minister and his backbench rebels has sharpened the focus and presented a picture of a shaky, unstable administration under siege not just from the Opposition but also from its own backbench.

So far, Dr Gonzi has adroitly steered the ship of state through these perilous straits, avoiding most of the rocks in his path. But with Parliament meeting once again in juts under a month’s time, many think the days of the present legislature are numbered.

In popular perception, the time has come, but Dr Gonzi may have other ideas. There could have been, maybe there still is, an opportunity for the Opposition to ask for an early end of the summer recess and a vote of confidence, but so far that has not taken place.

When Parliament reconvenes, it has a couple of red herrings in its way: the IVF and cohabitation bills to discuss, presumably before being wound up. That will take time, as will the debate on the BWSC power station extension and heavy fuel oil. There must be a couple of important Bills such as, if I am right, that which ratifies the June European Council decisions. And then, maybe, the government will feel emboldened enough to present the Budget.

So it may be that October is taken up with these skirmishes and maybe some more, and the election may slide from this year to the next.

Anticipation of the election is already sky-high in people’s minds, as I said, and they are already making their own choices. The past surveys of public opinion have their own merits but all show a wide range of people who don’t know or will not tell who they will vote for. In the former case, people are now starting to decide. This process will continue over the coming weeks until Election Day.

Normally, we tend to think of the two parties as solid blocks of votes, or even tribal loyalties, but in reality they are not so monolithic. Despite all appearances of solidarity and solidity, they are galaxies of different groups coalescing around a single leader or leading team.

Despite appearances, there are many strands in our population and, as we evolve as a nation, the strands will increase and become more complex. To me, this has become very clear from the controversies that led the government to come up with the Cohabitation Bill and then to the controversies stirred up by the gay community when the Bill was finally published. Parties, well, one of them at least, have tweaked their approach to factor in this section of the electorate.

The coming election will be the first one to take place in an era when the social media has well and truly taken over the role of social communication from the staid communicators of past years.

Till the last election, the role of forming the public’s take on national issues was held by the television stations, which, following what happened after the so-called liberalization of the early 1990s, resulted in both parties each owning a very costly and wasteful television station.

Even before that, newspapers formed public opinion and the print media was considered an essential means to people’s minds. Hence, the battle for control of the print media in the 1960s, with the condemnation of the Labour papers and the battle against the independent or Opposition media in the 1970s and 1980s.

But now, the way to people’s minds has broken out of these easy-to-control forms. The proliferation of the social media, from Facebook to other media, from blogs to comment spaces on the news websites have irretrievably broken down the way people express their opinions, comment on what is going on, and disagree with others, including often resorting to quite offensive language to express their viewpoints.

News today is immediate: there is no waiting for tomorrow or for the shops to open to buy the papers. People know what happened just minutes ago, sometimes with photos or video clips added. And then people comment, rightly or wrongly, with no holds barred. It is enough to just see the comments about the sad tragedy of the Cospicua girl and her baby.

There is, as I see it, no way of controlling this veritable explosion by the means we had, and still have, with regards to the print media or television news.

For us, the coming election, fraught as it is with a thousand issues, becomes even more dependent, as I see it, on one bulwark – the common sense of people. It is not as watertight as laws of libel (but then, these are not watertight at all) and it is impossible to vet and check and countermand all that one does not agree with, and even more, all that is untrue or offensive.

The recent death of Dom Mintoff has brought about an explosion of comments which ranged from the sane and serious to the needlessly offensive and to those of plain bad taste. That should not have begun at all and once it did, it should have been brought under control and doused. Instead, it led to an explosion of vituperation.

No one gains anything by this, the country has no need to revisit the ghosts of the past and to bring back the eyeball-to-eyeball confrontations of the past.

True, the country must come to terms with all that happened in the past and to see things with the objectivity with which history judges what has happened. But that past is still fresh and people still carry wounds dating back to those days, from people hurt by the Church’s condemnations in the past, to victims of corruption and abuse of power. It will take a long time for wounds to heal and for a common understanding of the past to creep in. You just cannot fast forward this process. And to lash out is at least as bad as to twist the past and to create a myth about the past that does not stand when confronted with the truth.

Somehow, the country must move forward and ironically it now has to do so within the context of a keenly-fought coming election. That is what makes the coming months so dangerous and fragile.

At the same time, however, now that the barriers have fallen down and people are communicating directly with each other, instead of through the canalised channels of the print or broadcast media, where supervision in the form of libel cases or the Broadcasting Authority hold sway, maybe, just maybe, this will enrich the country and enable us all to see the various angles of any given subject.

At the end (or am I imaging things, that just as we survived the bad past, so too we will survive the coming clash?) people’s common sense will prevail. Malta is just too small to end up in conflagration because we all have close family and friends on the other side of the barrier.

There is intolerance in the air, or perhaps intolerance is an important component of the Maltese psyche – just look at the way we perceive asylum seekers or those who protest against hunting or those who defend/attack the Church. It would be a sorry day if we were to go down the road to intolerance, on whatever level.

Hopefully, in the coming months, the people will learn to leave the hate-mongers by the wayside, alone with their anger and vengeance, (and hurt too, for hatred is usually the end product of hurt).

The election will come, whenever it is to be held, and it will go. Someone will win, someone will lose. But the people of this island must go on and live and thrive and have children and go ahead. Whoever wins will have to come to terms with almost half the population that has voted the other way, and vice-versa.

Most probably, if I’m right, we still have a long way to go. It is surely impossible to bring the country to the hysterical and hate-filled levels of the past days and to continue at this level month after month.

If you think I am being irenic or needlessly optimistic, so indeed am I.

Cardinal Martini

Allow me to grieve today for Cardinal Martini, the former Archbishop of Milan, who has died.

I remember when he was beginning his ministry for I happened to be in Milan in those days. I knew nothing about him then, but later on, through reading some of his books (I even translated one, but did nothing to get it printed) I came to understand his prodigious wisdom and his saintliness.

He should have been the one chosen as Pope but the Vatican core ensured he was sidelined. He held different opinions on certain issues, and he backed these opinions with his Biblical knowledge.

As the editor of the Corriere della Sera, Ferruccio de Bortoli, commented yesterday, it would be a gesture for reconciliation within the Church if Pope Benedict were to go to Milan tomorrow for the funeral.

But, of course, he will not.