Ukraine’s embattled President Viktor Yanukovych yesterday announced that the Ukraine would be holding early elections in a bid to defuse the explosive situation that has been gathering more and more momentum as time goes by.

For months, protestors have been massing in the capital, Kiev’s main square, demanding that the government step down and that elections be called. President Yanukoych cancelled a visit to Malta at the eleventh hour a few months back, because the situation was degenerating.

As Malta embarked on the IIP citizenship scheme, Ukraine baulked at an EU trade deal and instead decided to forge closer ties with Vladimir Putin’s Russian Federation. The people of the Ukraine were outraged. What began as peaceful protests escalated and opposition MP and former heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko stepped in to head the opposition. Yanukovych refused demands to step down and hold early elections and the protests turned very violent. Many people died as Ukrainian security forces went in very heavy-handedly. It degenerated into all out street battles. The EU,  and to a lesser extent, the US stepped in to try and mediate. It looked to be lost, when all of a sudden, yesterday, Yanukovych buckled to pressure and announced that early elections would be held.

But it is now a case of will he keep to his word. Protests have racked the world over the past few years. In North Africa, it became the Arab Spring. Sadly, they faltered and what began as a hopeful wave of peaceful revolutions have turned into power vacuums and power grabs. The situation in Syria continues to degenerate and millions of people are suffering every day. Now we see that protests have erupted in South America  - in Brazil over public transport hikes, in Argentina over the economy and in Venezuela, over political oppression.

The EU has not been spared either. Protests broke out in Spain and Portugal when the financial crisis hit there, and Greece has been in a state of unrest for years. Turkey also saw protests flare up when a park was to be demolished. Many historians have observed that the post second world war to the millennium period was very rare – over 50 years of peace and economic cooperation in the midst of a period of almost uninterrupted strife for the past 500 years. Maybe history will be kinder, but it does seem as though the world and our societies are at the start of a downward spiral. We have been told that water shortage and climate change will be the next big drivers in the struggle to progress. All the while, in Malta, we complain that things are so, so bad. They are not. While we do still occasionally believe that our tiny islands are the centre of the universe, we still have it pretty good. Are we feeling the pinch? Yes, perhaps we are. Doe we have a bit of political unrest? Yes, probably we do, but that is down to us taking politics far too seriously, as a people. All in all, we still have it pretty good here. We shouldn’t forget that.