Cracking jokes on serious issues

It is sad that in its continuous struggle to preserve the credibility of its position on EU membership, the MLP has lost all sense of proportion. Its position has been undermined so many times that now it seems the MLP is left with no option but to engage in an exercise of total deception. Once we turn down membership we will then be faced with the full extent of this deception but by then it will be way too late to do anything about it.

Is this all too dramatic? Maybe, but what exactly did Gunther Verheugen say? "This decision (on EU membership) should be based on the truth and no one should tell the Maltese that there are beautiful alternatives to membership which, in reality, do not exist". Did he say "beautiful alternatives which do not exist"? Yes, and it is only the MLP which is talking about an alternative so I guess that pretty much tells us which alternatives Verheugen had in mind.

But Verheugen was not serious, at least according to Dr George Vella. Of course not, one may add, "he was just sharing a good joke with his good friends the Maltese population, all 370,000 of them." After all, giving a public interview as the EU Commissioner responsible for enlargement, allows him to crack many jokes. I guess his assessment that we will be marginalised should we not join the EU was just another "joke".

Looking back, it would seem that Verheugen does indeed possess a significant tendency to crack jokes in public. One may recall that little more than a year back he professed to not having an imagination which "is far-reaching enough to understand what they (the MLP) have in mind. I do not believe it is possible to get integration à la carte... this is not the way it works and I do not believe that this is an alternative that could be accepted by the EU". Instead of weighing carefully what the Commissioner was trying to tell us, the MLP attempted to twist his statement.

Little does it matter that equally serious statements were made by the president of the commission, Romano Prodi, or by the EU commissioner for trade, Pascal Lamy, who it seems also has a tendency to crack one or two "jokes" in public.

One such "joke" was that agriculture cannot be excluded from any agreement outside EU membership. Another equally serious "joke" was that the commercial advantages of joining the EU cannot be obtained through any other agreement with the EU. Now Pascal Lamy is only that guy who deals with trade in what is to become the largest single market in the world. He only deals with issues such as issuing trade sanctions against the US. He too is certainly in a position to joke about such matters while the MLP is not much inclined to losing its sobriety for a few lighter moments. It is seriously preoccupied with offering to turn Malta into the Switzerland of the Mediterranean.

All this could indeed amount to a good laugh were it not for the fact that we are talking about our future. The decision we are going to be called upon to take some time next year is a very weighty one which one way or the other will have a tremendous impact on the development of this country. But surely Malta will still survive should we decide not to join? Of course it will, but so does a hermit living in a cave. The only difference lies in the standard of existence. One just barely exists while the other lives a fuller life.

Now, the various statements made by the likes of Prodi, Verheugen, Lamy and Cox could all be dismissed as propaganda, delivered with the sole aim of luring Malta into that deceitful hell called the European Union.

However, the problem lies with the fact that if the MLP is ever going to try and obtain what it has been promising over the past two or three years, it is with these very same people that it must negotiate.

Given that they have already delivered their verdict on the matter, one cannot but question how in the face of such damning evidence the MLP continues to find the courage to dodge the real issue and to offer a mirage. And it is here that the most worrying aspect lies.

I say worrying because the MLP has significant influence over a large segment of the Maltese population and it seems intent on using this influence to continue selling what is in effect a pipe- dream or a mirage. That we are being purposely misled matters little or nothing because it seems that all is legitimate within the local political battle. That politicians are people in whom we invest trust and that they are meant to be very responsible when handling that trust, often seems to be of little or of no consequence at all.

It is indeed tragic that at such a crucial moment in the development of this country we continue to be plagued by such behaviour.