Only a week to go, now. Today week (for there are no “silent” days on the web) will finally see the end of a long and arduous election campaign that has sometimes had people feeling bored and frustrated, particularly when it all turned into a veritable slanging match.

While it certainly takes two to tango, there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the whole absurdity of most of this aspect of the campaign was the inevitable result of the ruling party’s refusal to discuss neither its own electoral manifesto nor the Opposition’s well-presented, clearly costed and well-received proposals for the next five years.

This campaign, however, has also had its many positive features, foremost among them the phenomenon of so many ex-Nationalists, ex-floating voters and formerly eternal anti-Labourites joining the national movement that has grown round Joseph Muscat’s revamped Labour Party.

Shifting political allegiance, be it only for one given general election or more, is never easy in Malta. The reality, until this campaign, had been that a lot more Labour-inclined people seemed able to seasonally switch sides than traditional Nationalists. Of the two major parties, the Labour Party has always been the more open, more democratic, more transparent, and more “rainbowish” in its internal set-up, which made it easier for the so-called turncoats. There had always been the perceived suspicion that Nationalists who dared swap political adherence would, metaphorically speaking, be risking life and limb – their own and their present and future families’.

This election has put an end to all that. While it is true that ex-Nationalists who have now come out declaring their support to Joseph Muscat’s national movement of moderates and progressives have been more or less vilified in their old party’s media and, particularly, the social networks, people seem to have accepted the fact that strict political loyalty in the old sense of the word is fast becoming a thing of the past.

New generations of voters have come up hating the very idea of tribal politicising on an island smaller than an average-sized city anywhere in Europe. Joseph Muscat, himself an offshoot of these same generations, was the quickest to spot this new allergy to blind political loyalty and to build his political/electoral strategies by actually recognising it. He obviously knew it was not going to be easy for him at first to convince the staunch traditionalists within his party, and the process of evolution needed both time and conviction, which is why even before he got actually elected to the leadership he was already talking about bringing down the walls of division that had inhibited and isolated the party.

In this way, Muscat has proved himself to be a natural strategist. His record in Europe and his direct and realistic approach to old issues and current problems, both internal and national, meant he no longer needed to look back. This has had an infectious effect on people who genuinely believe old-style politics no longer have a place in 21st century Malta. It is now more than obvious that the young have jumped at the opportunity to be the catalysts to a new political future, and the not so young have long been suffering from petty-politics fatigue, anyway.

There should be no doubt that this general election will spell the end of old-style politics in Malta and Gozo. Win or lose, the Labour Party with its swarming movement of moderates and progressives will have changed forever. Win or lose, the creaking bones of what’s left of the Nationalist Party will have to snap back out of its GonziPN nightmare and change with the times too.

There seems to be a national mindset for change everywhere. People have had enough of the politics of division and derision in a country where practically everybody knows practically everybody else and where even families have for far too long been divided on political lines. This has been going on ever since the Maltese, thanks obviously to their innate political acumen, which, as recorded in the annals of former governors and administrators, always baffled the British colonialists, managed to wrestle self-government for themselves 92 years ago.

Almost a century of mindless pique and division, sometimes taken to what are rightly seen today as extremely unjust and unfair levels that included even the sad imposition of moral and religious hurdles to new and progressive ideas, is happily just about to come to an end. As more and more young men and women take over the reins of political parties and national institutions, the change will have occurred within Maltese society as a whole.

Joseph Muscat has evidently been able to successfully combine this youthful zest with the sobering influence of experience he has at hand. It is a combination that has contrasted sharply with the less than convincing platitudes of an imploding Nationalist Party still trying to come to terms with itself as it continues to run on punctured wheels.

The dirty tricks departments on both sides of the political arena will still be seen throwing kitchen sinks and toilet utensils at each other in the next few days, but that will only be the tail-end furore of a dwindling storm. The following calm will be the immediate precursor to a new political era for the Maltese Islands, whether we like it or not. Enjoy the change. Even better, be a part of it.