This is supposed to be the heyday of sellers as the approaching Christmas days mark the usual buying spree days with lights, colours, noise and crowds all conspiring to drive us all to buy, buy and buy.

All sellers should be happy.

Instead, they are not.

The owners of the Valletta shops are up in arms against any idea of relocating the Monti towards the upper reaches of Merchants Street now that the government cannot keep its promise to the Monti owners cohort to relocate the Monti to City Gate.

At first that electoral commitment was about to be kept and markings were even laid down where the stalls would be.

Sacrilegiously, they were to be on either side of the Piano Parliament, straddling Republic Street.

Then, when Parliament was inaugurated and one scare story happened, many saner minds saw that such an assembly of stalls could be a security risk.

But then, when they tried to cram the stalls inside one stretch of Ordnance Street, and, obviously, not all could fit, that plan fell through.

Earlier, the concern that stalls selling cheap imported stuff like underwear, jeans and costume jewellery would look tatty, the government took the initiative to come up with a uniform stall model which ended up the laughing stock of the country.

Result: another suggestion hits the ground.

That is when the pressure began to tell. The Monti stall owners had always been in Merchants Street but where originally they spilled over from St John’s Square, they were pushed back by the PN government to the area near the Valletta market.

The stall owners never liked that, and they liked the relocation of the Sunday market to St Francis Ravelin even less, and that helped in turning them all to PL hard core voters, not that they were much less before.

Freeing up that part of Merchants Street from Old Theatre Street to St John Street has enabled that part of the street, as well as the top part from Castille downwards, to reclaim Merchants Street as the real jewel of Valletta it is, even more beautiful than Republic Street with its wider proportions. Shop owners hurried to invest and a beautiful result was achieved.

Today, much of that sheen has gone. The Monti stall owners have crept up towards St Lucy Street (because of ongoing restoration works on the Palace back facade) and many of the enclaves in the centre of the street where people can eat and relax have gone.

Up near Castille, government and ministers’ cars park abusively on the very beautiful stretch between Palazzo Parisio and the Auberge d’Italie.

Apart from the Palace restoration works, other works are earmarked – the Valletta Market (as we say in this issue), the relocation of the National Museum of Fine Arts to the Auberge d’Italie and maybe, if the permit comes through, the works to enlarge the St John’s Museum.

The Merchants Street shop owners are up in arms and the Republic Street shop owners have spoken in solidarity.

This is what happens when a party in Opposition makes rash promises which it is not sure it can keep and which also, as in this case, may be conflicting with each other – the promises to the Monti stall owners and the promises to the Valletta shop owners.

The chickens have now come home to roost.