There is, or may be, a rather semantic difference to be made between promising to be a government that is business-friendly to becoming a friend of businessmen.

Most incoming administrations promise the former, but many end up being the latter.

Ours is a small country whose people have seen great changes this past half-century from a small oppressed colony whose inhabitants were egged on to be at each other’s throats to a member state of the European Union, and of the eurozone, soon to enjoy its six-months stint as President of the European Union, a harbinger of peace in an unruly sea, a melting pot of civilisations and cultures, a financial services sovereign and fast becoming a beacon of international business.

We may safely say we have done all this mainly on our own, though with some sporadic help, despite the many wrong steps we took over the past years.

At any point in time, including this time, it is possible to chart the course of future years, naturally within the limits of what we can foresee.

Successive generations have thrown up successive waves of businessmen, or entrepreneurs. For a long time, these were mainly traders or import agents. Then came the wave of manufacturing with alternate results. Then saw the dawning of the age of construction entrepreneurs who for a time thought they could branch off in many directions, such as hotels and tourist accommodation.

Recent years have seen entrepreneurs branch out in so many directions – from ICT development to financial services, from online gaming to plane registration. Compared to many other countries, ours is a microcosm of pulsating energy, confused maybe, and going everywhere, but with a verve and dynamism that is rarely replicated elsewhere.

However, we have something we are coming to see as a main hindrance to the future development of our small country: politics, government. A country needs a government to represent the community, to keep it on the straight and the narrow, to draw up laws and enforce them.

But democracy as is practised in the advanced countries of the world is based on elections and these are decided by elections normally held at regular intervals.

In our case, given the complicated and mathematically skewed manner we hold ours, this has come to mean a songfest of superhuman endeavour, with parties falling over each other to promise the most, to rope in the discontents and to promise them the earth.

The past election is an example of this. There was no real need to go for overkill but that is what the present government did. It is admitted the faults and mistakes of the past administration were many and varied and above all serious. That, in itself, should have ensured the election of the Opposition. There was no need to go for all the promises that were made and that are now being implemented, as democracy insists they should be.

What this country needed in terms of business was a government that is business-friendly. Instead, it is getting a government that is businessmen-friendly. The two terms are not the same.

A business-friendly government ensures there is a level playing field for all. A businessmen-friendly government installs a system of cronyism. A business-friendly government ensures that there are equal opportunities for all. A businessmen-friendly government sees to it that only the few and the chosen get access to opportunities. We are not at this stage so far.

Our membership of the EU, so controversial in its time and so unanimously accepted today, should have put our pro-open market polices and equal opportunities policy stances at a level where they are enshrined in the collective mind. If, at this point, they are not, that is a matter for serious concern.