Editorial

Dr Fenech Adami delivered one of his most memorable speeches throughout his 34-year parliamentary career in December 1986, when replying to the Finance Minister's 1987 Budget Speech. Dr Fenech Adami had described the Budget as "irrelevant".

The then Leader of the Opposition, who for five years had waged a dignified campaign for majority rule, had chosen that strong term because, in the circumstances, the details of Government's financial estimates paled into insignificance compared to the crisis of democracy facing the country.

Political violence, including the incidents at Tal-Barrani, had reached a climax with the killing of a young Nationalist activist, Raymond Caruana, who was having a drink at the party club in Gudja. A few days later, a Safi man, Pietru Pawl Busuttil, was framed by the police and charged with Caruana's murder. Maltese democracy was in very grave danger.

The political tension was explosive, as the country was gearing for a general election - which was to come five months later, on the very last day it could have been held. The outgoing Labour government had been elected in December 1981 with a three-seat majority, yet, in a straight, two-party contest, it had obtained a minority of votes (49%) against the PN's 51%.

In December 1986, despite relentless pressure by the Nationalists for a solution to this perverse result, which - thanks to the gerrymandering carried out by the Labour-dominated electoral commission, would have obtained even had the Nationalists won 54% of the vote - the two parties had not yet reached agreement. They were to do so over a month later, in January, 1987, with a constitutional amendment to which the Labour government had attached a quid pro quo - the entrenchment of Malta's neutrality and non-alignment.

Today we are again facing a general election - possibly the most important since independence - to determine whether the sovereign will of the people, expressed so forcefully just three weeks ago in a referendum on European Union membership, is to be carried out. Will the Prime Minister, whoever he will be, sign the treaty of accession on Malta's behalf in Athens on April 16, thus sealing the choice for membership indicated by a 53.6% majority in the referendum?

Well, not if the Labour Party wins on April 12. Its leader, Alfred Sant, months before the referendum was held, insisted that he would not be bound by the result. He would not be bound by what the people want on a specific question in a quintessentially democratic exercise which is the preferred method of electoral consultation in a country, Switzerland, which until recently he held up as a model.

But Dr Sant went one step further. When the result was out, he did not say that he was not bound by it, but that his alternative to EU membership - the inexistent 'partnership' - had somehow won! By the same perverted logic, he has now declared that he would not be signing the accession treaty in Athens.

On the other hand, he has been trying to woo Labour supporters who voted Yes to Europe by 'promising' to hold a referendum to decide between 'partnership' and membership - to be held after the 'partnership' negotiations have been concluded. That, by his own variable estimates, can take from a month to ten years!

It is obviously a promise that Dr Sant cannot keep, for the simple reason that the alternative to 'partnership' - membership - will simply no longer be available if Malta does not sign the accession treaty now. The 'referendum' promise is therefore another example of the disdain in which Dr Sant, in keeping with the behaviour of the Labour government between 1981 and 1987, holds the will of the majority.

One would therefore be fully justified in applying the term "irrelevant", which Dr Fenech Adami used to describe the Labour Budget in 1986, to the electoral programme being presented by the MLP this time.

It is irrelevant because the next election must be fought on whether the people's sovereign will is carried out by the new government. All else is very much secondary. To elect a government formed by a party which has already declared it would trample on the people's will as if this was of no consequence, and which would have been elected on the strength of a string of nice-sounding promises bar the all-important one - to respect the people's will - would be as illogical as the MLP's stand on the referendum result. It would then truly be a case of the people getting the government they deserve.

Failure to elect a party - and it can only be the Nationalist Party - which can carry out the people's will as expressed on March 8 will have untold consequences for Malta, among them a total loss of credibility and goodwill, complete isolation and zero investor confidence. But then, of course, no amount of empty promises will redress the situation.