The Cold War saw the Western democracies engage communism on a global scale. The main feature of this war was to avoid direct conflict between Russia and the West by using proxies to do the dirty work for them.

I say this because that is the way our political wars are fought in Malta. While the PN and the PL more or less try to look as if they are going by the rules of engagement, their proxies, the columnists who grind out the daily dose of criticism or poison, carry on the fight in their name.

The election to choose Malta’s candidates for the European Parliament has tended to temporarily overshadow the proxies because the contest has seen the participants engage in close combat of the nastiest kind. Everybody I meet says that he or she is astounded not only at the vitriol expressed, but also at the revelations being made.

Nevertheless, one cannot help but notice how certain news items are timed to fit into the bigger picture of the main parties. It has almost become customary to see an eye-catching report appear on the eve, or on the morn of a TV debate on a particular subject. I find myself looking out for them, so predictable has this kind of strategy become.

I have insisted time and again that the citizen must be made aware of how the EU and its structures work. Can the culture we live in ever let anybody open up enough to the European way of doing things? The TV campaign regarding the workings of the EP is very good. But such campaigns must be ongoing and not only appear on the eve of elections. They must visit every structure of the EU and be completely transparent with regard to everything that happens. This includes information about the earnings of our MEPs, otherwise how can our people ever hold them to account? Perhaps the EU representation in Malta can start the ball rolling, dare I ask?

But what is needed above all else is a media dedicated to events in the EU. The present campaign has shown how badly informed our citizens are. Surfing the web is still not only beyond the ability of many of our citizens, but also beyond the interest of most. So debates on purely European affairs foundered early as the participants quickly realised that there was nothing they could say that would have made an impact on most people in Malta.

So we are back to proxy fighting again. This time the parties themselves, for a change, are the proxies for Europe. We are told that in the EP there are no parties, but only groups who are supposed to do their best to make the Union work for their own countries. That doesn’t make a difference for Malta. Here it’s choose PN or PL for Europe and forget about everything else. The slogan obviously is “Yes we can”, but separately.

The Maltese people still have not realised that laws are formulated in the EU and our national parliament only has the freedom to transpose them. This is not an article intended to push my candidature, but if I were to be elected, one of the first things I would try to do is to provide people with an objective and unbiased view of the events that will more and more shape our lives.

Supplying the right information and educating the citizen to take an interest in the European Union and politics in general, is the only way to deprive the proxies of whatever gain they are making by volunteering to be the stilettos for their masters.

Dr Muscat is the leader of Azzjoni Nazzjionali and a candidate in the EP elections