As you know, after a long much needed break, last week I returned with a very light article talking about the glamour of Maltese sunset, the splendour of Gozitan sunrise and the magic of our beloved islands which I adore, no matter what. I was really trying to see things in a beautiful light, then, the light of hope. 

Maybe my brief brush with optimism was made possible by the intoxicating, exhilarating effect of hurling myself out of a plane at 13,000 feet in sub-sub zero temperatures, and sky diving over Franz-Jozef glacier in New Zealand's breath-taking South Island.  

Because as soon as the spell-binding, healing effects of the experience together with a few days backpacking  from one National Park to another in crisp clean air wore off, I found myself once again clinging frantically to the walls of the invisible vortex that the local political scene has become.

Not a single day passes without a stark reminder of the debacle this legislature is fast becoming.

While our sick and vulnerable patients line the corridors in abject misery at Mater Dei, and while our  exhausted, heroic, doctors and nurses struggle against all odds to give their patients the best of care, our main political  parties hurl insults and accusations at each other as to who is the most deeply mired in corruption of the two. 

While public money is thrown around unashamedly to expropriate unnecessary properties, and provide super paid jobs for unqualified unproductive party cronies, the present government, like the fallen government before it,  fails to find the money to acquire the necessary beds for our aged and debilitated, in order to be able to free the badly needed Mater Dei beds for acute medical cases.

We hear about projects yet to come and private investments yet to materialise, promises for the future and roadmaps to nowhere, while our parents and loved ones waste away in overcrowded, dangerous hospital conditions. 

Malta needs more hospital beds now, in preparation for winter's crisis months. If even private hospital beds are all spoken for, the only immediate solution I see is to acquire St Philip’s which won't take 20 years to build and cost the taxpayer twice the money to cover theft during building, because it’s there, ready and waiting to become operational and plug the hospital bed deficit that shamed the health service under the Nationalists and has become so much worse now. 

Then there is the infamous environment issue.

This government does not have a mandate to dispose of the nation's land and property as it pleases.

The people made that clear when they voted PN out for plundering our undeveloped swathes of Maltese and Gozitan land by increasing the areas eligible for development.

The people voted us in because we promised them that we will protect and care for what is left of our cultural, architectural and natural heritage.

We have NO mandate to pillage Marsaxlokk further by planting a massive LNG tanker in its bay, turning Marsa into an 'energy 'hub, or uglifying Zonqor Point.

We have no mandate to bury Sliema further under towering skyscrapers, or of begrudging the people of Birgu of the little area they have been swimming in since time immemorial.

We have no mandate to rush   MEPA Demerger laws  through Parliament before proper consultation is carried out and the rationale and benefit of the new legislation ( if any) is made  clear to the public who doesn't  even know what hit it in this regard, and who will soon enough be asked to foot the massive bill that this jumbled up demerger exercise and its turbulent aftermath will cost the public purse.

We have no mandate to do another eighties on our country's image by permitting blackouts to become the order of the day.

We have no mandate to destroy small and big business by mismanaging our energy capabilities  and then boast about reduction in tariffs which  we know very well would be grossly offset by loss of business.

Indeed we have no mandate to entrust our energy project of the century into the hands of a private company which demands an unprecedented government guarantee for its financing.

We have no mandate to leave dirty police officers in charge of the people's institutions instead of punishing them for bartering their loyalty  to the nation with personal business interests.

We do have a strong mandate  however to govern with transparency and good sense,  to pick exemplary CEOs that lead by example and make us proud,  to decentralise and steer away from the absolutism that is creeping in, to fight corruption  like the plague instead of justifying it by past misdeeds,  to make decisions not according to personal pride but according to national need , and to deliver on  our promises to the electorate in line with the mandate we were entrusted  with.