We are going through an intense and interesting European Parliament election campaign. I would say that it is much more intense than in the other EU countries, and this reflects the high participation rate in political activities in Malta. While this is still an important election, it is also perceived not to be directly related to our day-to-day lives in Malta, and therefore we expect to see a lower turnout for the Nationalist Party and also a higher degree of protest vote. On the Labour side, there will be huge mobilisation of voters because this is the first electoral test for their new leadership. Their motivation is also driven by the fact that they have been in opposition for a number of years.
The campaign is revealing a clear distinction between the Nationalist Party and the Labour Party. Distinctions exist in the general mindset, policies, campaign, ethics and the quality of the candidates.
It took the Labour Party five whole years to accept the EU referendum, and to accept EU membership as our reality. During all these years they still looked at the EU as a strange animal that we need to fight against. The mentality of the ‘evil foreigners’ that Mintoff instilled in them decades ago has become the foundation for most policies of the Labour Party, especially those related to Malta’s relationship with the outside world.
Anyway, after they started to pay lip service to the reality that Malta is an EU member, trying to give the impression that they are committed to membership, it did not take that long during the current campaign for the fundamental Labour mindset to stick out. Evidence shows that most Labour candidates are still fundamentally against EU membership; some of them campaigned harshly against EU membership; most, if not all, voted against membership in the referendum campaign.
Five years after membership Labour candidates are talking about this ship that we cannot abandon or that the Maltese were wrong six years ago. Some candidates insist that they told us so. Some claim that we are now a colony. Irrespective of their leaders and their ever-changing slogans, evidence shows that the mindset is a static one. It has not changed, and it seems it will never change either.
Muscat has been Opposition Leader for almost one year now, and has not managed to come out with realistic policies on any issue in Malta, be it education, health, environment etc. Their way forward is to sit on a fence, put spokes in the wheels, criticise the government for every decision and initiative, even if they contradict themselves in the process. Lately one of their speakers declared that the Labour Party takes decisions only on public perception. He did not even realise the audacity of what he was saying. He threw the merit of a decision out of the window, and stated that they only base their decisions on what the public thinks. Who needs to work on policies and preparing to be an alternative government, when frontlines of the Labour Party have declared that their decisions are dictated by opportunism, populism and public perception rather than merit and what our country really needs? No wonder that they have been sitting on a fence all these years.
In this campaign, we have experienced huge distinction between both camps. The Nationalist Party discusses issues that are important to Malta, based on concrete proposals, and has focused on making sure that we send the right people to the European Parliament. Our aim is for Malta to have a voice, and an appropriate voice at that.
The Labour Party campaign is focused on the perceived negative aspects on Malta’s membership of the EU. They never look at and discuss membership as a whole package, and they never talk of the big picture. No, their aim is to deceive the electorate and try to blame everything on the EU. The whole campaign is based on trying to prove that six years ago we were wrong when we voted for EU membership, and that Labour was right all along. The other main message that is coming out of the Labour camp is that Labour MEPs are required to work against the Maltese government at a European level. Political interests have a higher priority when compared to national interests.
When it comes to ethics, we always think that Labour cannot go deeper than the level they have reached, but they surprise us again. They lie blatantly during the campaign, and even ignore the evidence when corrected in public. They manipulate public speeches. The latest gimmick is that Labour is recycling the lie that the government intends to charge fees for public health services. The GWU has climbed on the bandwagon. There is no sense of credibility at all. Alfred Sant as Prime Minister was the only PM to charge fees on health services, while the Labour Party advisor, Edward Scicluna, is all out on record declaring that he is in favour of introducing hospital fees. Thank goodness that with the help of certain media tools such as the internet, one can put the evidence out there in order for the people to judge for themselves.
Finally one can easily distinguish between the two sets of candidates of both political parties. First of all, the quality and the experience of the candidates. While on the Nationalist Party ticket, one can easily observe a wealth of experience related to EU matters, on the Labour Party one can only see candidates who are not able to simply push the right buttons when it comes to vote in Malta’s interests. While on the PN side, the main aim is to strengthen Malta’s voice in Europe, on the Labour side, their aim is to prove Malta wrong and to work against the government. While most of the PN candidates represent different sectors of society and issues that we face today (youths, environmentalists, self employed, workers, etc), the Labour candidates only represent themselves, their grudge and vindictiveness, and most important of all their loyalty to the party and partisan politics.
I hope that the Maltese electorate will be able to make good use of their right to vote and elect those candidates that will make us proud of them while working for Malta within the European framework.
David Agius is the Government Whip