Different political platforms

My interest in contesting next June's European parliament elections has clearly pained Marisa Micallef Leyson. For why else should she go haywire and disclose to us that she has got her EU politics all twisted and inverted?

Funny how some Europhiles get their EU politics all twisted and perverted. "To add insult to injury," she laments, "we now have people like Mr Magro and Mrs Ellul Bonici who want to become our representatives in the European parliament!" And she adds: "Those who were unreasonable in the referendum and election campaigns cannot be seen to be reasonable now!"

"It is like being pro-divorce one day and anti-divorce the next, or anti-abortion one day and pro-abortion the next, simply because popular opinion did not go their way. Do they not have any principles?" This sort of reasoning shows that she does not know what she is talking about.

Mrs Micallef Leyson is mixing up a political platform that democratically campaigned for a no vote in a referendum with a post-referendum platform that takes into consideration the fact that the electorate has voted for EU membership.

Had I chosen to ignore the people's decision, I am sure Mrs Micallef Leyson would have been foremost in calling me anti-democratic.

But my EU-critical stance stays in place. My principles remain intact. My political platform has simply been pushed onto a different stage because, whether I like it or not, Malta is to become a member of the European Union.

I campaigned for the no vote till the very end and no one can accuse me of "eyeing a Brussels job". I view the European parliament as a political battleground not some cushy job for knaves and flatterers.

In reality, the European parliament has many EU-critical MEPs who are dedicated to their cause. Ms Micallef Leyson has got it all wrong, as I pointed out in another English language newspaper recently.

Unlike wide-eyed or blue-eyed Europhiles, EU-critical MEPs inform the people of the realties behind European integration and push forward their views. They are not necessarily Eurosceptic to the extent of wanting to pull their country out of the EU (although some MEPs are) but are critical of the process of centralisation that devalues national parliamentary democracies.

You get critical MEPs mostly with groups like the European United Left/Nordic Green Left, the Union for Europe of the Nations or the Europe of Democracies and Diversities, but they are also found with the Conservatives, the Liberals, the mainstream Greens and even the Socialists. These MEPs represent critical and Eurosceptic voters in a process called democracy and they do not necessarily represent the likes of Mrs Micallef Leyson.

To find difficulty in understanding that the 48 per cent who rejected EU membership also have a right to be represented in the European parliament shows lack of political understanding.

"And just why is it," she asks, "that the worst of the anti-Europeans from the MLP are the very same people who want to represent this country (remember this country, not only MLP voters) in the European parliament?"

First, we are not "anti-Europeans" but were against EU membership.

Second, EU-critics and Eurorealists make the best MEPs.

Third, while each MEP represents his or her electors, Mrs Micallef Leyson is free to vote for her own representative.

I share my principles with more voters than the 1,600 who voted for me in the last general election. My loyalty lies with the 134,000 who voted for Labour's programme, most of whom are vulnerable to the economic pains that come with membership.

My advice to Mrs Micallef Leyson is to focus, in her post as Housing Authority chairman, on those who are in dire housing needs. She should also write about her projections over the future jobless who will become homeless for failing to meet payments on their bank loans.

Or perhaps she should just stick to local politics and aim at increasing on the 115 votes she had garnered in the 1998 election.

But if she is up to a challenge for a TV debate on European affairs, I am ready whenever she is.