I was indeed not at all surprised to see the letter by Eddy Privitera entitled Malta needs a government instead of a ‘clique’ (TMID, 19 December). In his letter Mr Privitera wrote, “I challenge Angelo Micallef to reply and deny what I wrote in my letter” and indeed I proceeded by taking a look what he wrote.

Yet again Mr Privitera gives us another page of manipulated facts and statistics and suppositions. Indeed, most of his gloomy scenarios are either yet to materialise or indeed are mere possibilities and of course, as the past has proven, very little if anything has ever materialised from what Mr Privitera and his friends at CNI predicted. Wasn’t Mr Privitera the man who told us that the EU will create unemployment? Wasn’t Mr Privitera the man who told us that we will be swamped by foreign workers? Wasn’t Mr Privitera the man who told us that in the EU we’d be just taking our marching orders from Brussels? Yet Mr Privitera could not have been proved more wrong than he actually has been.

I shall not proceed to go into each and every statistic which Mr Privitera quotes, as that would be a waste of space. The truth is out there for all to see whether EU membership resulted in the doom and gloom predicted by Mr Privitera or whether EU membership resulted in the economic growth, in the increase in investment and the opening up of various opportunities long promised by the “yes” camp of which I was a proud supporter.

Mr Privitera attacks the PN for not having changed its position on the EU in 1996, yet what Mr Privitera fails to understand is that the election in 1996 was not a referendum on our foreign policy. The MLP’s partnership policy was rejected in a specific referendum, whether Mr Privitera accepts this result or not.

Mr Privitera quotes the Qui-Si-Sana residents, forgetting of course that the issue over there is specific to that locality and does not in any way reflect itself nationally. As for the local councils, if the Malta Labour Party believes in non-partisan local councils it should stop contesting the local council elections irrespective of what the PN does rather than boasting that Labour councillors make a difference.

Indeed it is very sad to see that Mr Privitera refuses to move ahead with the times and remains committed to his battle against our membership in the European Union. Even sadder is his attachment to former Prime Minister Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, the man who told us that an invasion of Aids was our reason for not joining the EU. Most sad however is having to see Mr Privitera, a committed Euro-sceptic, vote for a party who has MEPs sitting in one of Europe’s most pro-European political movements!

Angelo Micallef

Marsaxlokk