At least, that is what he would have us believe. And even if that were true, exactly what does it say about the nature and character of the man? That he is not somebody you can trust; that he will tie his flag to any mast that is convenient for him, but then still privately do what is best for him personally even if it conflicts with the stated objectives of the common project for which he is working. In other words, he is nobody you would want in your camp, and fresh questions have to be asked about why Muscat has had to persuade him out of his government in much the same way that his predecessor did with John Dalli.

This newspaper reported yesterday on the written questions which Karmenu 'Il-Guy' Vella has received from MEPs ahead of his formal questioning in the European Parliament, and on the replies which he has given to those questions.

On reading them, I could only think that Maltese society, and most particularly Maltese politics, are like one great carpet beneath which all our crimes, wrong-doing and misdeeds are swept, however great, whether we end up in jail or not, no matter how much damage we do and how great the scandals we create or of which we form part. If you will forgive my switching from the carpet metaphor to another, this is clearly because the boat in which we all sit crowded for our entire lifetime, sharing our minuscule berth with our immediate descendants and then giving that berth up to them altogether to share with theirs, is so tiny and crowded that we consider it safer to behave as though the completely abnormal behaviour of some of our more important fellow passengers is normal, and to say or do nothing which will rock that boat and put us at risk of endangerment by the anger of the other packed-in passengers.

I read the first part of Vella's question-and-answer farce, laughed with disgust and didn't read on. I couldn't be bothered. Having first experienced him as a minister in the Cabinets of Dom Mintoff and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici in the worst years Malta had seen since World War II, when corruption and violence were the order of the day, I hold him in absolute contempt and feel little different about those people who are so shallow that they see nothing intrinsically, fundamentally wrong, no disturbance of the moral order, in having somebody like this rewarded with high office and then sent off into the sunset with a massive pension. As it happens, I felt exactly the same way about John Dalli's nomination and appointment to the same office, but I knew at some level that Dalli would bring himself down because he would be unable to stop behaving, in the European Commission, the way he thought it entirely normal to behave in Malta and Libya. I don't think Karmenu Vella has the same apparently pathological inability to shape his behaviour and inclinations to the context of his situation, so the same thing will not happen to him. Rather, I think that with Vella, the problems will be entirely those of competence and coherence because he has been promoted way beyond his abilities. Of course, if he has the good sense to staff and keep an efficient and competent cabinet, they will do most of his work and keep his doddering ship afloat, paper over the cracks and mop up any potential messes he might make. They won't be able to give him an eloquent tongue at speech sessions and formal banquets, but nothing can be done about that. Dalli didn't and still doesn't have one of those, either, and that's just too bad because when so many Maltese can speak well, being represented by barely articulate individuals is a real let-down. It may be a minor point for some, but I don't believe it is minor at all. Truly educated and intelligent people are never inarticulate and ineloquent. They might occasionally be tongue-tied, which is different, but when they form sentences, those sentences are perfect. People who speak badly, who articulate sentences poorly even in their own native tongue, give the impression that they are uneducated, and this is generally because they really are. Education is not just a few years spent at university with a degree at the end of it, and both John Dalli and 'Il-Guy' are illustrations of that.

So why did I stop reading Il-Guy's written question-and-answer session with MEPs? It was after reading this one of his replies, which was right at the top of The Malta Independent's report. Vella had been asked about his commitment to the European Union. He responded:

"I am a convinced European, having voted for my country's accession and, more recently, as a minister in a pro-European government led by a former member of the European Parliament.

"Throughout my political life, I have been guided by the same values and principles, which I would consider fundamentally European: the principles of democracy, solidarity, of equality between men and woman, human dignity and non-discrimination, and the social market economy."

I was thoroughly sickened. What sort of place is this, in which fossilised old politicians from a troubled era, like Karmenu Vella, can reinvent themselves and present a false picture in this manner with no concomitant uproar or even the merest protest in the press? "I am a convinced European, having voted for my country's accession and, more recently, as a minister in a pro-European government led by a former member of the European Parliament." The brass neck would be unbelievable were this not Il-Guy and the blatant Labour Party we are talking about. Karmenu Vella formed part of the Labour government of 1996-1998, a government that was elected on two main counts: to repeal the VAT legislation, that is, the main tranche of common European taxation, and to halt the process by which Malta planned to join the European Union. One of the first acts of that government - and Karmenu Vella formed part of the Cabinet which took that decision - was to 'freeze' Malta's application to join the EU and to stop the reform of laws, systems and institutions in preparation for membership. Ditching VAT legislation and replacing it with something called CET in a prolonged farce that caused the economy to grind to a halt was part of this rejection of the European Union.

Karmenu 'Committed European' Vella continued to be a leading light in Alfred Sant's fervently anti-European Labour Party even after it was voted out of government in 1998, even as its supporters burned EU flags at meetings and were encouraged to think of the European Union as bringing a plague of foreigners to Malta who would take our jobs. At this point, I should remind you all that he was also a leading light in the Labour Party of the early 1990s, when its then leader Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici - who is even more anti-EU than Alfred Sant - told party supporters at meetings that the European Community (as it was then) was an evil place where women lived in rabbit hutches and not lovely big homes like Maltese women, and that joining the EC would bring AIDS to Malta. Did Karmenu Vella resign or protest? No, he did not. Did he say he was pro-EU membership? No, he did not.

Karmenu Vella continued to fight the anti-EU-membership battle alongside his party leader Alfred Sant right until referendum day. I repeat: he formed a key part of the political party which campaigned for the No vote. In now claiming that he voted Yes, when he was a significant part of the No campaign, he makes himself out to be either a liar or a disloyal fraud. If he is not lying about having voted Yes, then he was lying to the electorate just over a decade ago, when he was part and parcel of the Labour Party's anti-EU-membership campaign. If he disagreed with the Labour Party's policy and commitment to keep Malta out of Europe, then why was he standing for election with the Labour Party? That shows you perfectly what sort of person he is.

Vella puts forward as proof of his commitment to Europe the fact that he was a minister in a government "led by a former member of the European Parliament". Aside from this being a complete non sequitur, the fact that his prime minister was a member of the EP means nothing. Alfred Sant is now also an MEP, but nobody is going to use that fact to suggest that he is in any way committed to Malta's membership of the European Union or that he approves of it and thinks it good. The European Parliament contains many members who are there solely because they dislike the European Union and wish to help undo it from within, having been put there by electors with the same objective and attitude.

Karmenu Vella uses our prime minister's status as a former MEP to illustrate his - Muscat's - commitment to the European Union, and therefore Vella's commitment by default. This is truly shameless. Our government - the government of which Vella formed part before he was kicked out and upstairs, probably because he is so fumblingly inept and getting worse with the passing years (I can see no other reason) - is led not by a former MEP so much as by the leader of the No campaign in the EU referendum. So our committed European, Karmenu Vella, was in actual fact a minister in the Cabinets of committed anti-EU prime ministers and anti-EU campaigners Dom Mintoff, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, Alfred Sant and Joseph Muscat. That doesn't signify commitment to Europe but rather, any sensible person would conclude, the opposite. We're looking at some three to four decades of active participation in anti-EU politics there. But anybody can be born again for a big pension, wouldn't you say?

As for the rest of his reply to that question, I shall have to stop myself saying what I think because it would be unprintable. No polite terminology suffices. As I said earlier, Karmenu Vella is seared into my mind not as somebody encountered at receptions in his more recent incarnation as tourism minister, but as a key component of the savage, corrupt governments of the early 1980s, which spat upon democracy, squashed freedom of speech, violated human rights, murdered the free economy, massacred education and the health care system, instituted in-your-face patronage, and created the perfect environment for the exponential growth of corruption at all levels. So when I now read this, you will understand why I find Vella's falsity now possibly even more sickening than his part in the human-rights-violating government back then:

"Throughout my political life I have been guided by the same values and principles, which I would consider fundamentally European: the principles of democracy, solidarity, of equality between men and woman, human dignity and non-discrimination, and the social market economy."

 

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