Robert Abela on Sunday finally sounded the starting claxon for Malta’s 2022 general election.  We knew it was coming – we just didn’t know exactly when.

Now, after weeks, or months actually, of speculation, we know that Malta will go to the polls on 26 March.

It gives a date of conclusion for an electoral campaign which in truth kicked off quite a while ago.  The electoral machinery in the PN has been in operation since the back-end of last year amidst speculation that the election may take place in November 2020, while the PL has begun to mobilise its own forces with more intensity in recent weeks.

In terms of the electoral campaign, it will be relatively short – only 34 days, just the one day longer than the minimum allowable period between the election announcement and the election date.

The question now is in what way the election will be fought.

The situation now is seismically different to what it was when Malta last went to the polls in 2017.

Both the major parties have new leaders in Robert Abela and Bernard Grech, and while the major issues which dominated 2017 – mainly the massive corruption scandals looming over the government – are still present, they are no longer the electorate’s main priorities.

Instead, we can expect to see a lot of focus given to the country’s recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, Malta’s greylisting by the Financial Action Task Force and its potential knock-on effect on the economy, the assault on what’s left of Malta’s natural environment, and – the most recent issue – the significant inflation in the prices of day-to-day items.

While it would be reasonable to expect Abela to make the country’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and, more importantly for him, the country’s economic recovery since compared with other countries; one awaits to see where the PN will draw their battlegrounds.

One of the major points of criticism levelled at the party in 2017 was that it had chosen to focus far too much on one topic – in that case, corruption – and therefore made itself into something of a one-issue party.

From what we have seen so far, the PN has managed to diversify its focuses into more than one area.  What remains to be seen though is whether they have had their finger on the pulse of the people when deciding what those focuses should be.

Likewise, Abela will be doing everything to make sure that he has his own finger on the people’s pulse, as has been seen in his recent efforts to “be in the heart of the people” by visiting certain public areas and meeting people face to face.

Finally, it must be seen how the parties and their leaders will handle themselves throughout the campaign.

Will we see a campaign of mature, well-natured and proposal-focused debates with the end goal being that one party proves they have better ideas to take the country forward than the other?

Or will we see a campaign characterised by attacks, sometimes personal, mud-slinging, and cheap shots, with candidates sometimes acting more like schoolchildren arguing in a playground rather than mature adults, and with the social media stratospheres being awash with party-organised ‘trolls’ intent on bashing each other without any relent?

One hopes for the former rather than the latter, but that can only come if each respective leader leads by example.

Will that happen? We will have to wait and see.  In the meantime, strap yourselves in, because the race has well and truly begun.