Many people who had been on shutdown are now back at work. Schools will reopen next week. The Christmas lights will be taken down and normalcy, sort of, returns.

But of course, we will not return to normalcy. Actually, the preparations for the coming election were only doused a bit. The billboards were covered up with Christmassy images, but still everyone knew which political party had put up which billboard. There are little tell-tale signs all over them.

Starting this evening, with the two new deputy leaders being interviewed on Dissett, leading up, no doubt to the Presidential declaration on Monday morning which dissolves the House of Representatives and calls for a new election, an enormous machine is set in motion.

Police begin distributing the voting documents, candidates register, electoral assistant are chosen and all sorts of public meetings start taking place. It would seem that earlier indications of the parties beginning the campaign with a bang has been changed and the parties now seem to have preferred a soft beginning to the campaign.

But make no doubt about it: when the campaign ratchets up it will become unstoppable, involving, as it usually does, the entire population. When the day comes a huge organizing effort kicks off trying to get all who can to the polling booth (and even some who quite clearly can’t).

People who have never been in Malta before ask us in wonder because they must have heard so many stories it all seems incredible to them. The figures are there: Malta has one of the highest turnouts in the world, and is beaten only by those countries where voting is obligatory.

The peones on both sides have been eagerly awaiting the signal, the bugle call, or the call to arms. Given the election this time looks like being a very keenly contested one, there is much enthusiasm on both sides.

While all this is part of the national colour and folklore, let us hope that nobody goes overboard either with enthusiasm or with antagonism. The people of these islands well remembers the dire episodes of the past. While there has been a progression of sorts from the physical approach to the use of the social media and blogs, from the pasting of posters all over the place to nice leaflets that drop into the letterbox, the fierceness of the coming clash may lead some people to forget the elementary rules of tolerance and the rule of law.

Let’s hope that when 9 March comes along (and it is not so far away now) we can be proud of the way our country faced up to its electoral challenge.