This month will have been sent the British demand for the UK to exit the European Union.

Months have passed since the referendum on the issue was held in Great Britain. Up to now, few indications emerged pointing to how negotiations could shape up. One would have expected this to happen till the end, about most technical areas covering how burdens and changes in financial and commercial commitments resulting from the divorce would be distributed.

What I had expected would happen – and it has not – was that some form of political debate about the direction of UK – EU relations in coming years would be launched. The airy-fairy dispute about a hard and a soft Brexit was obviously not going to lead anywhere.

Now what is the danger in this? Negotiations could be entering into very difficult technical deliberations in the absence of a political vision regarding the future.

***

Quandary

For somebody like me who is a member of the European Parliament, a big dilemma arose once the scandal burst about the alleged money laundering by the PN, which is in flagrant violation of the law regarding party financing.

Should the PN’s own example be followed, so that in all arising opportunities within meetings of the European Parliament, the issues raised by this scandal are highlighted? To do so, one could follow a number of models.

Like for instance, the treatment meted out to Toni Abela, driven by an underhand and extremely vicious campaign.

Or should one adopt the approach followed with regard to Leo Brincat, comprising  open and underground personal attacks?

A third way would be to copy how PN representatives have behaved in the European Parliament committee that is dealing with the scandal of the Panama papers.

All three models would be quite effective in showing how rightly or wrongly, the PN, and mostly its leader, lack all integrity and honesty. MEPs would immediately believe this.

And why bother about the problem that along with the PN and its leader, the reputation of the country as a whole will suffer? As it happens, both the party and its leader never seemed to consider this a problem...     

***

Roman memories

Were we still in times of old, say under the Roman Empire, the collapse of the Azure Window at Dwejra, Gozo, would have been considered as a presage of big events soon to come. Sacrifices would have been conducted in temples – so that intestines would be extracted from slaughtered victims – and according to their colour and condition, the upcoming happening could be predicted. Would they be propitious or disastrous?

Could the fact that after having been in place for centuries, a rock structure has collapsed mean that one part or other of our economy or society is in line too for collapse? Or is it the meaning of the Dwejra event that huge prejudices and obstacles which have paralysed the society for too long will at last disappear?

Perhaps to sideline these uncertainties, what we should do is build a replica of the window in rock, at exactly the same size as the original. Who will notice that it’s not the same as the original?

There’s a caveat to this: we took so long to repair the Tritons’ fountain at the entrance to Valletta. How will we succeed to build a new azure window at Dwejra, before all memories of the “old” one will have completely disappeared among the people at large?