The way the Labour Party attempts to incite public anger at and contempt for the individuals who are inconvenient to its objectives is really quite worrying. That it attempts to do so at all is of great concern. That it quite often succeeds is distressing not just to the individuals involved, but to those who are truly liberal in their outlook and personal and political values.

When individuals lay into political parties and governments, that is democracy. When political parties and governments lay into individuals, that’s fascism. The Labour Party doesn’t appear to get this less-than-fine distinction. It lays into individuals savagely and viciously all the time, bringing to bear the full weight of its party machinery and powerful broadcast and print media. That many people consider this to be a fair game and equate it with what, for example, I write is understandable. It is understandable because many people are ignorant. That Labour Party, however, does so knowingly, and so cannot be forgiven for it. It knows that a political party bringing its full weight against an individual is undemocratic, totalitarian and fascistic. It also knows that criticism of political parties and the government by individuals, whether they are ordinary citizens, journalists or others, is an essential element of democracy. And yet it goes ahead and rips into those it has declared to be its enemies.

The latest targets are Roberta Metsola and David Casa, the two Maltese members of the European Parliament who voted for the resolution against the sale of citizenship. It is not just the Labour Party which has been trying to whip up a frenzy of hatred and contempt for them, but also – and this is deeply worrying – the government itself, led by the prime minister who was the first to open battle against them. “This is the first time that members of the European Parliament have voted against their country,” he said. All else followed from there. Since that statement, the comments boards of the newspapers’ online editions have been full of similar remarks, and there have been opinion columns by the government’s camp-followers in much the same ‘spit and hiss’ vein. 

Should the prime minister target individuals in that manner? Of course not, not even if they are politicians. It’s a terrible course of action, and yet the prime minister takes that road because he appears to be unable to make the shift from leader of the Opposition to leader of the country. But beyond that, Roberta Metsola and David Casa do not represent Malta. Like all other members of any parliament, they represent those who voted for them for that specific purpose – to represent them. They quite clearly cannot be considered to represent the government of Malta and its objectives because the likelihood that most of those who voted for them also voted for Muscat and the Labour Party is minuscule indeed. There is another point: even John Attard Montaldo, Marlene Mizzi, Claudette Abela Baldacchino and Joseph Cuschieri would have been justified in voting for the European Parliament’s motion, against the Malta government’s wishes. Why? Simple: the government does not have an electoral mandate to sell citizenship/passports. It was not in the Labour Party’s electoral programme and there was no hint of it anywhere in the campaign.

Those who voted Labour did not vote for the sale of citizenship. They are entitled to object to it, and the Labour MEPs were entitled to vote for the EP motion because – with no electoral mandate – they should vote according to what they believe their constituents wishes to be, and not according to what their government wants.

In view of all that has gone on over the last few weeks, we can say that the government has failed the ultimate test of its much vaunted proclamation, only a few months ago, that it would be a ‘gvern li jisma’. Or perhaps not, because the Maltese verb is ambiguous and is used for both ‘listen’ and ‘hear’, which - as English words tend to do – have very specific meanings. The government might well be hearing us, but it doesn’t follow that it’s listening. As the prime minister famously said, just a few days ago: “Noted, but no thanks.”

 

 

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