That question encapsulates the transition from the political campaigning of the last month to the actual hard work of governance, responsibility, and implementation.  It emphasises that the decision-making phase is over while the phase of action   ̶   delivering on promises, navigating challenges, and producing results   ̶   now begins. The winner will move from the "speaking" to the "working" phase, the focus shifting to accountability and execution.

First of all, we must be thankful that the democratic process has worked again.  The outcome (I am writing before the result is known) is the culmination of a hard-fought campaign, a smooth election, and what I might call a collective decision-making process in which the country's population will have given a mandate to a particular party.  The "hard work" lies ahead. 

In this election, like in previous ones, we have occasionally seen politicians at their worst. Like the rest of us, they can be venal and self-centred. It wasn't just great fun. But that does not diminish my faith in democracy.  Democracy is the civilised, non-violent resolution of conflict among legitimate competing interests. I don't know how else  ̶  except through politics and democracy  ̶  we can resolve our differences and live together.  Wise compromises  ̶  the result of the dedication, skill, and intelligence of elected politicians  ̶   are the best alternatives to brute muscle or raw numbers.  

A former Mayor of New York, Ed Koch, once famously said, "If you agree with me on 9 out of 12 issues, vote for me. If you agree with me on 12 out of 12 issues, see a psychiatrist."  So, it is not that the winning party in this election has X percentage of the voters agreeing with it on every single campaign promise.  Some humility is very much in order.  Failing that, the psychiatrist might be required.

Elections have been rightly described as a one-day sale. Today, candidates and leaders will experience the ecstasy of victory, or they will endure the agony of defeat. One cannot but admire enormously the candidates or leader able to face defeat with grace.  One hopes that none will concede defeat like the Californian politician Dick Tuck who, upon losing a California state senate election, said simply, "The people have spoken ... the bastards."

All the parties in this election have invested a lot of passion, energy, and time.  One cannot blame them if, in the immediate aftermath of the announcement of the result, some will perceive their failure to have their point of view validated by the voters as a threat to their world.  It is difficult to coexist with someone who has a different point and his point of view is victorious.

It is unquestionable that the participants in the electoral race, and their supporters, have believed fervently in the rightness of their views and counted on having other people share those views.  It is quite tough to have their strongly held views repudiated.  So, tonight a great number of people who have found themselves on the losing side will need to grieve their loss.  They will feel a tremendous amount of vulnerability.

Grieving and anger are natural and human responses to loss and unwanted change. So, it will take a few days or weeks before the losing side will realise that it isn't healthy to hold on to anger about something that can't change and is in the past. The challenge they will have is not to let bitterness and hostility become habits and limit their moving on.

Part of grieving involves generating a schema that lets the losers accept a new reality.  If that schema does not happen, the losing side can stay stuck in bitterness and negativity.  In the weeks and months ahead, the losing side will feel unsettled and at times uncomfortable.  

How long it takes to overcome the bitterness depends on how personally affected different people are, how much they personally suffered, and how deeply invested they were in a certain outcome.  Naturally, a lot of people had a lot invested in the outcome of this election. Negative feelings ran high on both sides. It may be a few months before the painful feelings start subsiding. The fact of not having had one's way may bubble for a while.

No doubt, the winning side will make lofty statements about cooperation with the losing side and call for national unity.  It is standard.  More often than not, it is hollow.  The formula for reuniting the nation requires herculean efforts by the leaders and institutions that remain standing once the dust settles from the bare-knuckled brawl of the last four weeks.  

It is rare in Malta that a strong level of statesmanship transcends partisan politics.  The effort required places a premium upon actionable results.  The task that lies ahead for the next Administration will demand a forceful yet compassionate vision that is regrettably largely absent from the public discourse. On the other hand, the more quickly the losing side accepts the defeat of not having its vision for the country accepted the better off as a society we will be.  Blame is bad both for physical health and for prescribing good policy.

For the country to have a chance of working together, constructive, and positive change would have to be the order of the day.  The PL and PN would have to be willing to compromise. This is a tall order indeed but a necessary one.  It requires political leaders to abandon their fealty to special interests and reject the political calculi targeted to ensure re-election.

There are ample signs that the infrastructure of our political system is crumbling and will inevitably collapse under the weight of deferred maintenance. It has happened in other democracies. We are not immune. Unless we undertake massive reconstruction, the bridge that connects the citizenry to its elected representatives will quite simply fall down.

In our governance system, we merely elect people to office and trust them to do the right thing.  The standard view is to look at politicians as wielders of monolithic power   ̶   decisive players whose personal judgments, skills, and values shape public affairs, almost heroes. There is little focus on how our economic system and the influence of monied interests profoundly limit those who seek to create change from inside the system. This monolithic outlook is in stark contrast to the collective marshalling of social power needed to transform society.

The faultlines of the system are further aggravated by the lack of coordination and commitment by most NGOs and civil society groups.  They tend to form individual relationships with public officials and politicians to lobby them on their core issues.  The elected, in turn, work either to appease individual groups by meeting specific transactional requests or, more often, to wear them out.    

What civil society actors need is a more ideological and multi-issue approach, bringing a range of voices into shared strategic discussion. This is both a strength and a challenge.  If they were to pool their organisational resources, finances, premises, fund-raising, research, training, community out-reach, and campaigning talents, their effectiveness would multiply severalfold.

If the Government and the Opposition were genuine in involving civil society, they would set up permanent structures where legislators and civil society actors actually share concerns and information transparently, strategize, discuss policies, and agree broad objectives.  To a certain extent, we have the Malta Council for Economic and Social Development which performs some of these functions, but it isn't enough. 

Often, we hear politicians say, 'My door is always open' or 'I'm always open to input from you and from my constituents."  But being open to a phone call or a meeting isn't openness to civil society.  In practice, it is the language of co-option.  I invite you in, make you feel that we are on the same side, assess your strengths and weaknesses, and make hazy promises.  In Malta we call it consultation  ̶  a far cry from real dialogue.

I started this opinion by talking about the real work ahead.  Whoever wins later today will have a huge challenge. The country is at a sort of cross-roads. The astounding economic expansion of the last few years has brought material prosperity, but it has also ushered in a crop of problems that can no longer be ignored.  The question of what type of economic growth we should have, what the role of foreign labour will be in the medium to long-term, and how to address the pressing problem of the indigenous population decline, are all demanding answers and action.  The physical infrastructure needs upgrading, transport being the most urgent one. 

All too often, we hear about investment in energy, waste treatment, and other physical infrastructure, but little about the soft infrastructure  ̶  that is the non-physical, institutional, and human systems necessary to maintain a country's economic, health, social, and cultural standards. While hard infrastructure is important, soft infrastructure  ̶  such as education, healthcare, law enforcement, and financial systems  ̶  is equally vital to support social and economic development.

In this election, the two main political parties have promised to transform Malta into Treasure Island. We have been given a map with Xs marking the spot where we could possibly find the treasure. The colourful and adventurous pirates have taken us on a month-long adventure exploring the island, but we still do not know whether this adventure was a real one or a fiction.

In the years to come we will find out whether Malta's John Hawkinses will indeed find the treasure or whether we trusted the likes of one-legged Long John Silver and Israel Hands.  Robert Louis Stevenson's fiction work had a moral: John Hawkins' growing up and realising that treasure Island is a myth.  Managing growth and development in a complex society can be a nightmare, but one hopes that treasure island will not be both a myth and a nightmare.