So what it’s going to be?

The Italians have a certain élan about such things. They have progressed from throwing coins at Bettino Craxi to having an orchestra playing Beethoven’s Ode to Joy as Silvio Berlusconi went to the President to offer his resignation.

The last time a government was overturned in Malta we had Joe Debono Grech running after Dom Mintoff in Palace Square to beat him up. The last time something similar was close, some months ago, was when we had two groups in Palace Square, one booing and one cheering. Then it all died down when the crowd realised the government was not being sent home.

Now tomorrow.

It very much looks like the present government will be defeated tomorrow night despite all the possible consequences with regard to the Budget and its implications, both as regards government revenue and, more importantly, with regard to such things as COLA adjustments, income tax decreases and the like.

If the government is sent home, so too will the Budget be rejected. Although there have been some urging that particular aspects of it be retained and possibly passed as a package, I really cannot see how this can be.

First of all, if the government is sent home and the Prime Minister made to offer his government’s resignation, I cannot see how, agreement or no agreement, a new law can be passed by a defunct parliament.

Secondly, a Budget is one whole package that cannot be split up into constituent parts, some of which can be given new life while others delayed.

Thirdly, a Budget is a legislative proposal by the party in government and no one, not even an ad hoc majority of the House can usurp its role to propose taxation and other measures.

So, as I see it, once the government is dead, so too will its Budget. If we are to go for an election, then the Budget has to wait for a new government and any changes it feels it wants to make must first pass the EU Commission scrutiny process before a Budget is presented.

Really technically, I suppose, without a Budget that is approved by the House, the government is blocked in its revenue and expenditure aspects. I have no doubt that recurrent expenditure and revenue can continue (though there are some who doubt even this), but apart from that nothing can be done, no capital expenditure, nor anything that requires special parliamentary approval.

I expect the Prime Minister, an old-time hand at parliamentary procedure, to outline this in his speech tomorrow.

Now that we have reached this point, there are many scenarios that I know are being played with, including, if I understood it properly, having the Leader of the Opposition supporting the Budget while his party brings down the government. Whether this can be done is not clear at all.

We have thus come to the edge of the cliff, one we have played around so many times in the past year, and now it seems the wind will sweep us off our feet and plunge us into that great unknown which is a general election. Come tomorrow, we may find we have danced too near the precipice and there’s nothing to hold us from falling in.

An election need not be so dramatic nor the country held to ransom as it surely will be tomorrow night when listening to the radio or watching on television will most probably replace Christmas shopping or other pastimes.

I have said in the past weeks how much I envy countries like the US who have elections on a fixed date, come what may, instead of this beggar-thy-neighbour frolicking on the edge of a cliff with the whole country held to ransom.

This then, in all probability, is the end of this legislature. It is time to draw up some kind of appraisal.

We are seeing, have been seeing all this time, a radical dichotomy in our people.

On the one hand, there are those who live for politics, who either hope day after day their party gets a chance to govern, for, as they illogically and rather unconstitutionally put it, it is their turn at the helm while the others want to keep the helm in their grip for ages and ages.

Then there are others who go about their lives, with its little joys and many difficulties and who don’t give a toss about who gets to govern. I would not say this latter lot will not stop for a while tomorrow night to see what has happened but they will not feel impelled to go to Valletta and take part in whatever happens.

So while the first group sees this legislature now drawing to a conclusion as one overshadowed by the rebellion in the PN ranks, the second group sees things from a very different point of view. It may come to see the past years as years in which the crisis undermined all countries in Europe, bringing high unemployment, increased taxation and reduced benefits but somehow this did not extend to the shores of Malta.

It will see that the country has continued to move forward. Maybe, yes, things could have been done better and surely people should have been consulted more, but undoubtedly the country has continued to register improvements. Tourism has flourished, though the government was forced to accept low cost carriers with many a kick to its pants.

The buscades of the past days have shown that many are now graduating from our tertiary study establishments and families who had never had any graduate in their ranks now proudly parade the new graduates.

The economy has shifted to a higher plane in terms of some value-added products and, although the improvement may not be as widespread as it is sometimes made to appear, trends such as those in the pharmaceutical industries and the financial services sector (I draw the line at online gaming, a flighty segment) are positive.

Would a different approach have avoided what it seems will happen tomorrow? I doubt that. Ever since Dom Mintoff realised a single seat majority could become a stick to beat the government with, everybody and anybody learned the lesson.

This has thus been the legislature of rebel MPs, a novel experience for the normally solid Maltese political life. It reinforces the systemic instability of Maltese politics and nothing has been done, nor could be done, to eliminate this from public life.

On the one hand we have had half the country rejoicing at the instability for it hoped it would bring the government down sooner. On the other hand, the other side is filled with infighting about who will succeed after the defeat. So instability is not only not avoided, but is welcomed by many. Fools that we are we do not see that instability will continue to undermine our way of being a nation.

In the end, it has also been a legislature of missed opportunities, wrong turnings and especially arrogance becoming a mode of government when the opposite should have been the rule.

Anyway it will all end tomorrow.

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