Dark grey mutters

What has Malta done to deserve this? Why do its two main political leaders compete with each other to give the impression that they despise the people's intelligence? Why are they sinking so dangerously low as to mutter so darkly about grey areas as to cast a shadow across the path along which democracy treads delicately its daily way?

They were at it again this week, giving the worst example where they should be expected to be role models of proper behaviour. Surprise surprise, what drew out them out once more was Malta's relationship with the European Union.

That remains a grey area, waiting to be coloured through a democratic decision by the electorate. The Prime Minister wants to lead Malta into the EU, to assume whatever flows from membership, a mixed bag of pluses and minuses, with the balance perceived to be positive for the island. The Leader of the Opposition wants to keep her out, effectively to retain its present position, which is based on an old association agreement that has to lead to a free trade area and to conclude basic co-operation agreements.

The two positions are both legitimately and democratically held. The Prime Minister, having won four election majorities on his proposition, the latest being in September 1998, has a mandate to negotiate. It will be up to the people to decide on the negotiated package. How they will do that - the aspects of a referendum/election combination - is another grey area, about which many angry mutters are heard. But there it remains.

The PM is democratically entitled to do his best to persuade as many people as he can to support EU membership. He exercises that right with gusto, and also at considerable expense to the public purse. He persists in missing the opportunity to address the issue as a statesman, rather than as a rabidly partisan political leader. But his preferred approach is also his democratic choice.

He is not content with all of that, and with the public resources at his disposal to push forward his option. (I deliberately leave out of the equation the resources of the political party he also leads. It is essential, I feel, to make a distinction between the prime minister as Malta's elected leader, and Eddie Fenech Adami as the leader of his party, which represents roughly half the country. The differentiation is important to the sensitive taste buds of democracy.)

The PM cannot understand that there should be anyone who sees Malta's relationship differently. He did not only vehemently disagree - as Leader of the Opposition - with the Labour government in 1996 when it froze the application for EU membership. He feels that government somehow betrayed Malta in doing so, although the Labour government had won its own thumping democratic majority and mandate at the hustings.

That might just about be understandable in psychological terms, given Dr Fenech Adami's commitment to his objective, though equating one's beliefs with destiny is very dangerous on that same basis. It is not a position that squares completely with the way that democracy works. In that regard, he muttered more darkly still this week.

The prime minister has maintained for quite some time now that he knows of individual Labour MPs who hold views which differ from party policy, in that they are not against EU membership. His party media has strummed and drummed that line for all it was worth. The YES movement, which militates for membership, some months ago declared it would publish the names of such MPs. The political stupidity of the threatening statement apparently dawned on the more-calibrated members of the movement. The threat, which could hardly be called the epitome of democracy, has not been carried out so far.

The premier jumped into similar vein last week. He called upon Labour MPs who, according to him, favour EU membership, to declare themselves, to stand up and be counted.

Frankly I have yet to come across a single Labour MP who favours membership. But if any did, but chose to go by the party line, what democratic right is the prime minister entitled to arrogate to himself to demand from such persons a different behaviour? Eddie Fenech Adami has carved political standing for himself, beating three successive Labour leaders in four elections, and only being defeated once by one of them, the current Opposition leader. He holds total sway over his own party.

None of that gives him the right to tell his opponents what to do. That is not how democracy works. In political terms, to do so is neither clever nor wise. Political debate is about competing mortals seeking to persuade others. It does not include deities thundering to mortals from the heavens. Nor patriarchs who expect their word to be the command to others.

Hubris is taking its toll on Eddie Fenech Adami. He might do well not to simply listen to the echo of his own words and thoughts. Pride tends to turn off the lights warning about pitfalls along the way...

To be anti-membership is the democratic and legitimate right of the Leader of the Opposition. He is entitled to propel whatever argument to convince as many people as he can that Malta would be better off if it did not join the Union.

He too exercises his right with much gusto, and at least not by burdening the public purse. That he persists in using slogans to do so is his prerogative. Persuasion includes the technique of choosing the metaphors one feels enable his argument to get through, whatever the substance in it. It is also his democratic choice to adopt whatever tactics he feels would best serve his strategy.

Two weeks ago the Opposition leader put into play a tactic that was predictable enough. He did not mutter or think aloud over some grey area. He did not bring up an academic point. He wrote in measured terms, as practised writers are wont to do, especially when they hold high political office and are perfectly aware that the written word stays on record forever. And he did not write on a whim, an instinct, or because fancy took him.

To be sure, he spelled that during past months he had increasingly come to believe that it might be better for the country as a whole to totally shelve the EU membership/partnership issue for a few years. Instead, it would concentrate on the internal matters that need urgent and disciplined attention.

That was a clear political ruse. The country is not made up of sorry Spiro Agnews, whom Lyndon B. Johnson once cruelly intimated, could not walk straight on the pavement and spit at the same time. Our politicians, who like their counterparts in healthy democracies are constantly in adversarial crouch towards each other, must know that while they air their differences, they have to govern (if in office) or make sensible alternative proposals (if aspiring to get there).

The ploy spun out by Alfred Sant did not mean, as some quickly concluded, that he was changing course, that he had given up on his opposition to membership. Nor - I believe - that he meant to trip up the ongoing accession negotiations with Brussels.

The ruse was that, in due course the Opposition leader would say that there were non-Labourites who agreed with his proposal. Later on, as the Euro heat intensified, he would claim that he had offered to draw back, to give the country a respite, but had been turned down and it was not his fault if the battle had become bloodier.

A ruse, but part of the democratic game. What of it if the Opposition leader went on, in his carefully thought out and crafted piece, to include what did seem to have the makings of an incredible somersault? He wrote that there could hardly be adverse consequences with such an approach (i.e., shelving) both for the anti- and the pro-membership lobbies... membership could still be taken up in a few years' time, on terms that would not be too different from what is currently being offered. Ditto for the partnership model....

That simply confirmed the ruse in the proposal, given that if it were for real, it would negate the opposition to membership on the argument that the four freedoms that underpin the EU were not suitable for Malta.

The Opposition leader was entitled to his tactic. It attracted some support from within the Labour Parliamentary Group and the party, and some criticism from elsewhere, including this column. Such is the nature of democratic debate.

Not, however, according to Alfred Sant. In mid-week he returned to the issue. He exercised his democratic right to hold his position. He externalised the first part of the ruse, claiming unidentified non-party support for his idea. And he also promptly proceeded to call his critics names and fling accusations at them.

To call names does not require much grey matter. But, apart from being less than democratic, even if the Opposition leader can plead he is often called names himself, in terms of the interest and future of our people does it really convince self-respecting thinking juveniles?

Democratic persuasion is made of more serious stuff than that, whatever tactics it calls forth.