When this chapter in our life has passed, and it will, we need to see what sort of foundations we want to lay when we start rebuilding our demolished institutions.

To make deep changes that will be felt in the future, we need to forget and forgive deep divisions of the past.

We must look back, forcing anger out of our glance, in order to look forward.

The political parties must be part of this process.

In the PN, the embittered individuals of the different factions must cleanse themselves of the anger. There must be, in each of them, the nobility and goodwill that acknowledges that the party has lost its relevance. That self awareness must be the adhesive that repairs the tear. They ought to start doing that today.

The Labour Party is heading for deep infighting and finger pointing. I hope somebody emerges from within who understands the need to confront what happened before burying it. I hope they can come together to move forward.

The press is full of characters who have long hated each other. Now they are slowly moving towards each other to read from the same page. It will not be helpful to charge each other with past mistakes or accuse the connivers with connivance, if they have acknowledged their errors. Better to grasp this moment of consensus and use it to move ahead.

The streets are full of people who have a label pinned to their back, by others. Or one on their chest pinned on by themselves. But there are many others, more and more every day, who are discarding the labels and voicing their desire for a society which thinks more freely.

Many of us are realizing that this, Malta as it is today, has not worked.

We need a different form of power sharing and responsibility.

Political parties, their hangers on and their peripheral personalities, I was one of them, have been handing the sceptre to each other since Independence.

Over the years this has led to a pendulum of power which swung all the way in favour of one of them, leaving the other powerless. Then back again in the opposite direction.

In these extremely difficult times, I think we all feel the need for a less extreme society.