As we report on today’s front page, the European Commission will tomorrow deliver its opinion on the growth and deficit forecasts not just for Malta but for the entire EU.

This has now become an annual occurrence as part of the oversight that the EU has introduced on all member states so as to avoid any further recurrence of the problems which led to the crisis in the eurozone of the past years.

In our case, of course, the Commission statement and judgement will come at the hottest moment of the over-long election campaign and may well miss being given the importance and attention it deserves.

After the election is over, and a winner is declared, we will all have to go back to this statement and somehow try to come to terms with what it implies.

The campaign has now become degraded with personal attacks and allegations of sleaze that do no honour both to those about who they are made but also, in a way, to those who make the allegations in the first place.

Maybe there are some who are asking themselves how come that a proposal about alternative energy ended up in allegations about corruption in fuel procurement. Or how the defence of this administration’s past record has morphed into allegations about murky business in clubs pertaining to the other side.

So tomorrow’s report and judgement come at the right time and may perhaps serve to lift the level of the electoral debate to a more acceptable level.

After all, we have been struggling these past years to bring down our deficit and we have more or less managed to bring it down to an EU-acceptable level.

There are, however, two qualifications to make to this preceding statement.

First of all, it has been the experience of past elections that election year sees the deficit figure going massively overboard. This is what happened in 2008 and it looks like it is happening again.

Secondly, the statements by the Commission, as well as those by rating agencies, and so on, have always held that the predictions by the present government on growth prospects for Malta were on the optimistic side. This was also repeated in the IMF report.

Past statements have always complimented Malta for doing quite well in the years of crisis but also warned that much remains to be done. The uncertainty of the past year or so has complicated matters no end since we have collectively lost focus on where we are, where we want to go and how to get there.

As we wasted all this time in internecine bickering and, worse, we have lost ground compared to other countries who have meanwhile soldiered on.

Unfortunately, many of us can only see no further than Italy, our immediate neighbour, but that is a wrong comparison to make. As the Italians vote on Sunday, preceding our own election by two weeks, many of them are deeply conscious they seem to be heading more and more into the crisis which, being economic, social and political at the same time will take a long time to unravel.

No, Italy is definitely not a good model to follow.

But there are other countries which have taken the bit between their teeth and have turned around their fortunes. Think of Ireland, for instance, which took on a very heavy beating and which is now re-emerging. Think of Portugal, which too has taken immense pain in its stride and which is also re-emerging. Think also of Greece and all the pain its people have suffered.

For all the waving of flags and the proliferation of promises, the country now badly needs a reality check and some serious thought as to which is the best way forward.