On 20 January 2009, the inauguration of President-Elect Barak Obama is expected to become a celebration for the American people.

The November elections confirmed their opposition to the neo-conservative policies of the war in Iraq, unchecked free markets that destroyed manufacturing industries in the USA, and financial recklessness that brought the global banking system to insolvency.

President Obama’s journey into the White House is hopefully a new beginning for a society that allowed theocracy to dictate neo-conservative policies that camouflage the gap between reality and globalisation, delivering a painful experience of liquidation and a major collapse of household and retirement savings.

Leadership

Malta must live in hope that you, as the newly minted PL leader, will rise to the demands of the hour. Despite whatever tough talk you generate in Opposition, you must take a hard look and acknowledge to the Maltese people that your party has far to go before recapturing its former glory as a progressive and liberal party that has had difficulty delivering its best intentions.

While the fastidious of the opinionated press has been condemning the MLP for years with grossly distorted context, history will absolve it because of the solid foundation it established for the Maltese economy that created great opportunities for its working class and served as collateral in this government’s plans for privatisation. The endurance of these benefits for social equality far outweighs the negatives delivered by a few misfits.

This government does not exactly have a clear conscience regarding its 20 years of administration. Malta’s history is contaminated with dark periods where anathema and political discrimination were rampant.

May God in his wisdom look past their harvests and their medals and grant them all a merciful judgment.

Your predecessor Dr Sant had to deal with grievances that practically forced a political straightjacket on his leadership and eventually led to his much awaited resignation. He faced years of party turmoil caused by egocentrics who thought they were above the party; through it all, his ability to hold the MLP together is entirely due to his honest dedication to succeed in ensuring that the MLP remained a political force that defended social justice.

Say what you will about Dr Sant, but under his leadership, the MLP built its centre and a media empire that is second to none in Malta. To understand the importance of conquering this frontier, one has to comprehend how the MLP has been able to expose and overcome media collusion orchestrated to give the government the edge to retain power.

Thanks to Dr Sant’s vision and organization, many young and not so young devotees owe him their gratitude for earning a decent living. Journalistic fever inspired young Labourites like you to seek careers in an ambiance where only blue-eyed fellowships had opportunities. To your credit and others like you, you broke through these barriers with great ambitions and greater accomplishments.

No matter how you judge the 2008 election, the MLP under Dr Sant’s leadership had elected a majority of 34 parliamentary seats in the midst of all the shenanigans he endured and in any truly democratic country would be sitting on the government side with a three-seat majority.

Only in Malta, distinctions become vague about elected democracy under constitutional laws. On 8 March 2008 there were 5443 number one votes representing over 1.5 per cent of all eligible votes, which were passively discarded as irrelevant, while 1580 PN votes claimed four extra parliamentary seats that prevented democracy to be equally represented.

All party leaders ought to be ashamed of allowing this to happen without a whimper of protest, or demands to re-write Chapter VI – Part I Composition of Parliament – Section 52 of the Constitution, that makes a laughing stock of the process to elect legitimate representation.

After two decades of PN administration, the Maltese are now heirs to a poisoned political culture in which all the registered parties are culpable and can only look on in envy at what has happened in the United States in November and wonder why the electorate in Malta has been so mentally abused. In Malta, one party rule has made political integrity perishable and dreadful so that your relevance as Leader of the Opposition will be a struggle to complete the transition from Mile End to Castile.

Maltese neo-conservatism over 20 years of unchecked domains has fostered webs of theocracy and electorate manipulation that have succeeded in restraining Maltese wit to bravely confront this power to control the vaults of the nation, supported by cosy relationships of crony capitalism.

You are embarking on a mission to dethrone a government that has fallen under the thumbs of the powerful and the privileged. In collusion, they elect majorities through technology interference and spy rings, which helped form a Parliament to enact laws to the detrimental depletion of national assets and the subversion of government accountability that continues to bury this small nation under a mountain of debt.

In your parliamentary capacity, you bear the responsibility to face this present recession head on and remind this government how this global contraction was brought on by right wing policies, which Gonzipn still endorses with policies of exporting manufacturing to the Pacific Rim.

These realities are now beginning to expose the brash self-regulating free market illusions that have burdened the USA and the EU, including Malta, with uncontrollable deficits and national debts that are demoralizing.

By what logic can anyone expect the people of the Pacific Rim to engage in free trade on a level playing field, when they are manufacturing everything, continuously break copyright laws, and set their pricing with a controlled monetary system?

Economic accountability

As a progressive leader who must not abandon the party ideals, it is within your power to demand answers to satisfy the taxpayers that are numb and burdened with an uncertain future.

This market meltdown has been a moment of truth for conservative ideology, and a moment of validation for progressive liberal ideals

As yearly deficits continue their march in an upward spiral, the possibilities for Malta to react to a contracting economy become hazardous and downright dangerous. This reality exposes the reasons why the free market’s unbridled greed is imposing higher prices and forcing the government to legislate punitive taxes to enrich its empty coffers

At present, unheard of energy tariffs that the government insisted on implementing due to last year’s escalating oil prices, which have since plunged by 70 per cent, are simply a concocted hidden agenda to extract from the Maltese people the necessary funds needed to start building projects of alternative energy systems.

Due to this government’s lack of funds, neither will the EU commit itself, unless the Maltese government can convince Brussels that it has the necessary financial accommodations in place to honour these commitments.

This political imbroglio enhances the atmosphere of an economy in crisis, however beating the chicken to scramble an egg obviously sends a signal that this government’s economic scenario and financial plans within the EU need better leadership.

It maybe that the free market in this globalisation will never deliver the economical growth everyone expected. For starters inequality at the starting line has made fair competition the exception rather than the rule. A lot has been written about who really benefited from the privatisations of national enterprises in countries where rules and transparency favoured nepotism.

Social accountability

Using EU membership as an excuse, which hovered over the island’s political system like a biblical commandment and striking down anything that got in the way, the neo-conservative PN administration and their trusted friends, after gaining control of the enterprising entities of the Maltese economy, they appointed their ilk on foundations of think tanks and contracted opinionated journalism of the right to define conservatism.

This government’s policies became quite clear; EU membership and adopting the euro to open Malta’s border to free trade, amnesty to illegal immigrants to provide cheap and unaccounted labour and a total collapse of the national culture including the Maltese language.

If there is a word for the present situation in this miniscule Maltese nation, it is “unsustainable”.

Malta cannot sustain €200 million of yearly deficits because this island cannot expect the structural funds needed to come out of the sub-standard wages of the working class, increase the level of spending on social security, medical benefits and housing projects for nationals and illegal immigrants.

People’s taxes cannot be spent on patrolling the Mediterranean so that it can continue to assist the invasion of Malta by illegal immigrants, who see Malta as an easy target for accommodation because this government’s administration has made it so.

With all due respect, these people are different in race, creed, culture, and language and do not even have the slightest knowledge of Maltese history and our way of Christian life.

On this issue, Maltese journalism and other groups, blessed with the government’s indulgence for welfare distribution, are intolerant of dissent, branding it xenophobic and racist.

As this illegal immigration imperils Maltese lifestyle, this issue is reaching critical proportions and rising opposition among ordinary citizens will continue to increase and surely invite a possible and plausible response.

Was it for this that the Knights of Malta, the British Empire and all those Maltese war heroes stoutly defended this island against the Turks, the French invasion and two World Wars?

The PN have been winning general elections, but their neo-conservatism has lost the culture war by creating a Tower of Babel. A situation where undergraduate platitudes are revered as philosophy and its actions flatly contradicts whatever substance one can find in their moral speeches.

Last year it became apparent worldwide that there are no victimless crimes in politics, because the cost of corruption and unchecked greed are passed on to the citizens to cover the shortfalls of right wing policies that bankrupt governments.

In five years’ time, your ability to seek believable leadership, employing new manners of transparent Opposition and promising not to lie to the Maltese people will chart your future.

You must inspire others to steer this country away from the disadvantages of its right wing political gullibility, so that together you can pave the way for a progressive liberal comeback of doing politics that the Maltese electorate can trust and be proud of.

It is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents a destructive earthquake, because in an increasing fractured Maltese media landscape, the trusted aggregator may be the future this small EU State needs to recognise its limitations and analyse its interests.

However, be forewarned that the ever present neo-conservatism clouds will do their utmost to rain on your confirmation parade.