Well, we have been asking this same question since way back in the very early Seventies, when Dom Mintoff’s Labour Party finally made it back to power after the tragic events of the previous decade – when Malta was desperately seeking to affirm her newly-won independence while still stuck to the muck and sludge of religious interference in her internal politics.

We were asking ourselves the same question in 1987 when Fenech Adami’s Nationalists squeezed into power after the turbulent Eighties. during which democracy was used and abused in ways that best suited the political parties.

In 1996, Alfred Sant – now at the helm of the Labour Party – shocked the political prophets by soundly beating Fenech Adami, only to find himself losing a Vote of Confidence in Parliament just two years later. Back into Castille went the Nationalists, soon to have a new leader, Lawrence Gonzi, while Malta watched – in both awe and bewilderment – Fenech Adami crowning himself President of the Republic.

All augured to be new political eras and they probably were, but the relentless passage of time leaves only the few dedicated historians really trying to analyse and present them according to their own ideological tendencies and personal standpoints. I have, however, yet to read a truly disassociated Maltese historian.

Almost out of nothing – but at a time of economic gloom that had, in 2008, inevitably sealed Gonzi’s political fate – came Joseph Muscat’s new movement riding in a Labour sidecar. Quickly fast rewind to today and the political mess in which the country has found itself.

Labour will have a new leader in the second week of the New Year: that is always a gamble. Whoever takes over from Joseph Muscat – whether it is Chris Fearne or Robert Abela – knows full well that, for his tenure to be truly considered a new era in Maltese politics, he needs to assert his vision, to effect change where change is needed and, most importantly, to keep the economic boom going. So it is too early – and definitely not easy – for the pundits to claim that a new political era is beckoning.

The new Labour leader, who will also be the new Prime Minister, will quickly swoosh into the seat of power, fully aware of a divided Opposition desperately managing to present a semblance of unity thanks mainly to the horrid events since the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia. The likelihood of a marriage of convenience within the Nationalist Party is growing by the minute. The New Castille will have to be on its guard as the European cohorts of both the Left and the Right continue to patronise this little nation of ours.

Recent surveys have shown that the Maltese are among the happiest in the European Union with their government and their economic aspirations. It will be no mean task for the new Prime Minister and his new Cabinet of Ministers to retain these levels of public support, more so if they decide to submit to the EU vultures by suspending, if not dumping, any one of the country’s – and that of many others – main sources of revenue.

Sadly, Labour leaders are traditionally the victims of vicious political and media hate campaigns, often spiced with an Establishment vindictiveness that leaves one utterly exasperated. From Boffa and Mintoff to Mifsud Bonnici, Sant and Muscat, it often reached absurdly cruel levels that betrayed the very basic prerequisites for fairness and good taste, when personal attacks could hardly be camouflaged to resemble criticism.

Although they probably don’t need telling, Fearne and Abela cannot expect to be privileged in this unsavoury aspect of the Maltese political scene.

So while the New Year rushes in with the burdens it inherits of utter political disgust, climate change calamities, an insane rush back into the military trenches and a desperate world caught in a racist straightjacket, at local level it will have to wait for any sign of a new political era.

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Poetry in the unlikeliest of places

Fresh from the recent publication of my latest book of poetry, Balluta Blues, I was quickly brought back down to earth with a bump the other day when a friend sent me a photograph he had taken inside – of all places – the toilet of a popular restaurant.

It showed a framed collection of poems in Maltese, including an excerpt from an old poem of mine entitled ‘Ħsejjes’ (Sounds) which, one has to admit, does seem pretty appropriate in that kind of sanitary environment.

But then I started asking myself questions. Who on earth came up with the idea of displaying poetry in this, the unlikeliest of places? Was it meant as a joke or, perhaps better, was it presented as the ideal laxative for the lady or gent diner?

I have, over the decades. seen and participated in poetry presentations in sundry places and locations, from Malta’s famous catacombs, bastions and beaches, to cute French towns, Macedonian villages and Cypriot Orthodox chapels, but of course this restaurant toilet exhibition of the bard’s work certainly takes the prize.

Having been alerted to its existence, I plan to visit the place and let you know whether the original idea was to provoke the proper bowel movements, possibly after some grotty meal served there, or to merely raise a smile.