It is difficult not to feel sympathy for Robert Abela these days.

After a reign of one and a half terms with Joseph Muscat at the helm with a booming economy, an ever increasing number of jobs, a strong succession of electoral victories, with the sun shining brightly day after day, now comes his successor only to find numbing problems on his plate day after day.

(Well, this description is not completely true, because the allegations of corruption also happened in Muscat’s time and of course Daphne's murder)

But ever since he was chosen as the Labour leader there hasn’t been a day where something dramatic has not happened and which required the prime minister’s personal intervention.

The man must feel he is facing the fabled Horsemen of the Apocalypse one after the other. He may also be feeling by now he is spending all his time firefighting with no chance to plan ahead.

The problem is this is Malta and the buck, all bucks, stop at Castile.

The problem is that the agenda many times is set by the events and the head of government has a limited time-frame and limited tools at hand.

He also has his hands tied behind his back because of the too-precipitous commitment to 'continuity' he gave in his campaign.

And yet as I have had occasion to comment, his campaign was mostly based on a commitment to discontinuity in a way the electors understood.

There have been, to summarize, two unexpected crises where Abela has had to interject his authority and there is yet a third which overshadows the first two.

The first crisis was the rot inside the police. The dismemberment of the traffic section was undertaken at a time when the post of Commissioner of Police is still vacant. From what I remember, the officer now handling the reform of the sector is a very valid person.

The choice of the Commissioner is obviously a very different matter and although I disagree with the Opposition's two-thirds proposal, still it is important that the person who is chosen commands respect rather than mere loyalty to the head of government.

Next, the Hamrun tragedy. The prime minister immediately went on site and went back again. The national reaction was huge. The prime minister went on television and announced a revision of the construction legislation. So did his predecessor and the end result was the undermining of the preceding regulation – a truly criminal action.

The fact that the commission of enquiry now avoids the pitfalls or the preceding reform leads to hopes the voices of stakeholders will now be heard.

Even more importantly, the police have taken immediate action, something which I don’t remember happening in previous tragedies. Novel too is Abela's insistence that the log-jam of judicial inquiries reach conclusion.

He must understand however that the liberalisation unleashed by his predecessor has flooded the country with self-appointed constructors/developers many times unqualified, with dreams of making money without regard to neighbourhood relations, aesthetics or even business sense.

One must not rely on a downturn in the sector to bring about a correction. The law must be applied without fear or favour and the Planning Authority must be freed of psychological subservience to developers.

But now the prime minister is being faced by a far bigger danger and he may actually be already late.

I am speaking here about the Coronavirus.

These past days we have seen prime ministers like Boris Johnson and Giuseppe Conte (to say nothing about Trump) take direct charge of the national reaction to the spread of the virus.

But not in Malta where only health officials have been making many reassuring sounds. But the Maltese are no fools.

There is fear, panic and worse afoot and so far, as at on Friday at 1.30pm, Malta is still safe whereas the Vatican, Andorra and San Marino all have their cases.

Most agree it is not a question of whether but only of when. Make no mistake: it will be a very difficult time for all of us. We will be forced to change our daily habits and force the reluctant, the careless and the ignorant to conform, if anything to save ourselves.

The country needs its prime minister to lead the battle, not just department officials, however valid.

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