One hundred days is but a small fraction of the 1,800 plus in a legislature as long as ours. But it is common practice to analyse what the government has done in this short space of time and use it as a guideline for what will happen during the rest of the term. Of course, situations change and different circumstances arise, and so it does not necessarily follow that any mistakes – or any good decisions, for that matter – will continue to be repeated throughout the entire five years.

It must also be pointed out that these 100 days since the election have also been used by the Nationalist Party to start its own internal reforms after suffering a humiliating defeat at the polls. Even here, just as much as the government is still finding its feet, so is the Nationalist Party, which has undergone a huge overhaul in its structure and seeks to recover the ground it has lost in terms of popular support.

What has emerged rather clearly in these first 100 days is that the Labour government is more or less continuing on the same path as the previous administration in various sectors. There has been no outright shift of policy and the roadmap that the Labour Party boasted of having in its pre-election campaigning is still to be seen.

The Labour government kept the budget presented by the Nationalist government late last year, which means that, on the whole, it accepts the line of policy that had been taken up by the previous administration.

It has kept its promise to start the ball rolling immediately on a reform in the energy sector in a bid to reduce water and electricity bills, but judgment on this will be reserved until a later date when matters become clearer. It has also kept its promise to look into the justice system and is already working on proposals that were drawn up by a special commission that was set up. It is a pity that the Chief Justice has been left out of it. It has also kept its promise to continue listening to what the people are saying, as the attendance at the various editions of the Gvern li jisma programme has shown.

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has appointed a huge Cabinet of ministers and parliamentary secretaries to carry out the government duties. This has spread out the workload better, as it has given the appointees fewer targets to reach, but at the same time it has added to the financial burden on the country’s administration.

The waiver that was granted to Parliamentary Secretary for the Elderly Franco Mercieca has already come back to haunt the government, whereas the amnesty given to prisoners was received with mixed feelings so much so that Minister Manuel Mallia hastily called a meeting with the Victims Support Group in a bid to try to rebuild bridges. Society in general, however, was not pleased.

Other appointments that have been given by the government have been criticised because they appeared to be more a thank-you for services rendered to those who have been appointed rather than based on merit as the PL had promised before the election.

The situation in hospital is still more or less the same as it was at the start of the year, which means that the Labour Party had no magic wand to resolve the existing problems there. Still, it is quite ridiculous that the Nationalist media keeps pouncing on every case of a medicine being out of stock and patients who have been kept waiting for hours to be treated – when it was defending all these situations just a few months ago.

There have been a few howlers already. The idea of having a part-time eternal flame to save a few euros was a silly one, as is the proposal to have three Carnivals a year. One thing that is also clear is that the Labour government continues to blame the Nationalist administration for matters that still to be rectified. This is understandable, but soon enough it will no longer be a valid excuse.

On the other side of the political fence, it took the Nationalist Party quite some time to regroup after its dismal performance and historic defeat. In the first few weeks after the election, the party was all over the place. But now that the leadership team is in place, it seems that the PN has started to find its feet.

Where in the first month or two, the PN was too concerned with its internal reform to pay too much attention to what was happening in the country, these past few weeks have shown that it has become more alert to the overall situation. Its presence in the media has grown through regular press statements although, it must also be pointed out, not all of them were worthy of being called such.

The PN also seems to have embarked on a strategy to use parliamentary question time to put pressure on the government. PN MPs are often bombarding government representatives with supplementary questions aimed at exposing shortcomings. This may be a good tactic for scoring political points, but if overused it could backfire. There have already been occasions when PN MPs have gone overboard with their aggressive attitude. The party should choose its battles carefully, as otherwise it will come across as an Opposition that is not being constructive but is merely trying to put spokes in the government’s wheels.

On the whole, it has been a smooth transition that has not led to any massive changes in our lives – except, of course, the fact that the people running the country are not the same ones we had up to 9 March.

That is, after all, the most important thing.

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