Editorial

Opposition leader Alfred Sant is addressing almost daily press conferences to explain how his Malta Labour Party plans to improve life in various areas; similarly the Nationalist Party leader, Dr Fenech Adami, while the third party, Alternattiva Demokratika, also loses no opportunity to explain its policies.

The three parties are about to officially launch their electoral programmes, although we are already familiar with most of their details..

This is perfectly normal in the run-up to a general election, where voters would be expected not only to weigh what each party is proposing but also to gauge promises against delivery. One is also expected to size up the candidates and decide whether they pass scrutiny for integrity, honesty, commitment and readiness to be of service.

But the general election being held on April 12 is not a 'normal' one. Naturally, voters will take all the foregoing into consideration, but their overriding concern is only one: whether the new government will respect the people's will expressed in the national referendum held only two weeks ago: that Malta should join the European Union in its next enlargement on May 1, 2004.

All sane-thinking people in Malta and the international community knows that, with a turnout of 91 per cent, the Maltese have expressed themselves clearly and unequivocally in favour of membership: those who voted Yes outnumbered those who voted No by 19,466.

The only doubt about the result has been sown by Dr Alfred Sant and his blindly unthinking followers who have argued, quite ludicrously, that the MLP alternative of 'partnership' had 'won' because the Yes vote amounted to only 48 per cent of registered voters. And this because a few hundred had illogically followed the MLP directive to spoil their ballot papers, and perhaps a few thousand - Dr Sant himself among them - had equally illogically followed the third MLP directive not to vote at all. Both courses of action normally mean that one either cannot vote, or that one does not want to express any opinion on the question put, and that's that. Going by recent general elections, around five per cent never vote.

But Dr Sant's twisted logic knows no bounds. He who had damned the referendum before it was held as fazull (bogus) and sworn he would not be bound by the result, promptly declared that 'partnership' had won and ordered MLP supporters to go out and 'celebrate'.

Now, realising that a considerable number of Labour supporters, despite a disgraceful scaremongering and lying campaign, voted for EU membership in the referendum, Dr Sant is trying to woo them back to the party by promising that a Labour government would hold a referendum "to decide between partnership and membership", of course only after the 'partnership' agreement has been negotiated - perhaps in three years' time! - and abide by the result.

This begs a number of questions: Did not 'partnership' already 'win' on March 8, after all? And was not 'partnership' already an alternative to 'full' EU membership? And why should Dr Sant now accept the result of any referendum he might care to hold? In what way would it be different, apart from the question, from that of March 8? How will he determine the role of those who abstain or who invalidate their ballots?

If anything, Dr Sant's latest attempt to deceive the electorate proves conclusively that 'partnership' does not exist, if only because the wish-list it contains still has to be negotiated, by his own admission!

The electorate, we are convinced, will not fall for this. Already, leaders of the 31 constituted bodies who have supported Malta's EU membership have expressed their disapproval of this ploy.

The stark reality is that if Malta does not sign the treaty of accession in Athens on April 16, it would bid goodbye to EU membership for the foreseeable future - and so how could the will of the people, if it is for membership, expressed in Dr Sant's referendum, be carried out? Negotiations - if they get off the ground at all - would have to start from scratch and take years to finalise. And, by the way, our credibility would be worse than zero!

Since Dr Sant has declared that he would not be going to Athens to sign the treaty of accession on April 16, if he wins the election, the majority of the people who voted so resoundingly for EU membership on March 8 have only one choice if they want to see their wish carried through: to give their first preference to Nationalist Party candidates on April 12.

For this is the overriding issue of this "extraordinary" general election, as the Prime Minister rightly described it. Meanwhile, as it explains its national programme to the electors, the PN also has the duty to dismantle the edifice of lies built up by the MLP and the No campaigners about the European Union, which has misled so many into voting No.