The Labour Party has just reminded everyone what it has been striving for years to make everyone forget: that it is still incapable of governing the country. The way it reacted before, during and after the government’s – Central Bank’s decision to take the Maltese lira into ERM II shows it has still a long way to go.

Many seem to think that the Opposition’s main duty is … to oppose. Of course that is one of its main duties within the context of any real democracy. But the Opposition is also the alternative government and it must look ahead at the time when it is in government. The present Opposition quite correctly points out at this government’s words when it was in Opposition and quite correctly highlights the inconsistency between what the PN said from 1996 to 1998 and its attitude today. But then, not having learned the lesson well, Labour promptly falls into the same mistake.

Besides, the Labour Party owes its present situation – in Opposition for 15 of the past 18 years – to the mistake it did when it opposed EU membership just because the PN was in favour. Whatever is now being said to cover up these historic mistakes, the fact is that the party was wrong to oppose EU membership the way it did, that is without studying the whole issue, without seeing what was it that people really wanted, including its own supporters, it was wrong to whip up opposition to the EU the way it did in those terrible months prior to March 2003 because right now it would like to give an arm and a leg to erase what it said. And it was doubly wrong to have then tried to twist the results of the referendum instead of accepting the result there and then.

It is surely self-evident that a decision to join ERM prior to adopting the euro is a decision which goes beyond this government’s term of office, a decision which will leave its impact on the country for years and years to come, a decision which will rule the country even if and when Labour gets to government. It is a decision which is implicit in the EU accession – the newly-acceding countries cannot opt out or stay out, as Britain and other member states have done.

So what could a Labour Opposition have done in this regard, also considering the secrecy of the procedure involved, and the wider implications of the issue? No one would argue that the Opposition, on this or similarly sensitive issues like internal security, should toe the government’s line. Nor that the Opposition should not criticise the operations and decisions of the Central Bank, although that is an independent, autonomous body.

Yes, the margin for manoeuvre was slim, very slim, perhaps too slim considering the important decision. But one thing is certain: the Opposition should never have acted the way it did. Acting the way it did only shows how unfit it is to govern.

The Opposition should have never spoken about devaluation in the months before the decision. This was a hugely irresponsible thing to do and now that the lira is locked into the ERM mechanism the authorities must come clean and tell the country how much has that speculation (not only from the Opposition, to be fair) cost the country in outflowing reserves. This paper is sure the Opposition’s reason for speaking as it did on devaluation did not come about from any intention to hurt the country, but that is what it did. At the end, it made the argument for joining ERM that much simpler and urgent.

Secondly, by speaking out the way it did, not just about devaluation but also about the reasons the government and the Central Bank held for joining ERM, the Opposition immediately rendered the whole discussion partisan, with the automatic effect that it effectively silenced those who may not have been completely persuaded by the government’s and the Central Banks arguments for joining ERM the way we did.

Thirdly, there were the arguments, used by the Opposition before and even more after the decision to join the ERM, that this was premature and that “angels fear to tread…” Once again, this seems the same knee-jerk reaction as Labour had to join the EU: good, but not for now. Now this kind of argument makes political sense, as much as the same argument used against joining the EU in 2003 made political sense, in that it offers the electorate an easy way out: why change, why restructure, why undergo sacrifices when one can postpone pain till the next generation? Fortunately the electorate in 2003 saw the wider vision and voted this sirene voice down, but it still carries a huge attraction and one day, this coming election or the next, it may prove to be the winning card.

So OK, it is politically expedient for a party to argue against more sacrifices, especially at a time when it perceives that people are hard up and angry at a decreasing take home pay. But weigh this expediency argument against the arguments adopted by the government in favour of joining as quick as can be: does Labour really want Malta to be in the Second Division of the European economies? Or would it have kicked up an almighty fuss had government taken this road? Does it really think that keeping Malta in the uncertainty whether to join ERM now or later, what kind of entry level should it have, would have helped the economy and would have staved off the outflow of currency from Malta?

Of course there are huge arguments to be made to force the government to be careful not to allow the eurochange to develop into the free for all that was experienced in other countries. Of course the Opposition is there to see to it that the government keeps to its stated path and cuts the deficit as it said it will do and the debt as it said it will do and get the growth as it said it will do (consider too that it is humanly impossible to attain these three aims together). The Opposition seems to think that unless it opposes everything and anything done by the government it is not an Opposition at all. This was also the way the present government acted in Opposition, so there’s nothing new here. But that’s not the way it is and that’s not the way it should be.