Labour leader's contradictions

Having fiercely opposed Eddie Fenech Adami's appointment as President of Malta, MLP leader Alfred Sant lost no time in trying to justify his opposition by using the President's first official speech to the House of Representatives as a proof that he was right after all. In Dr Sant's opinion, Dr Fenech Adami as President cannot be the objective purveyor of views as the office demands.

In an article which appeared in Maltastar and The Malta Independent, Dr Sant wrote: "The question remains: How can a person who has been active as leader and dynamo of a major political party, with all the divisiveness that this implies in our political situation, expect to assume unifying responsibilities overnight?

"Indeed, the first speech given by the new President shows how difficult this is. He stated quite clearly that the March 2003 referendum decided for Malta on its EU membership. He may well believe that. So do many editorialists, columnists and readers of The Times. But many other people, including myself, believe otherwise. The real decision was taken in the April 2003 election.

"By any standards, the statement made by President Fenech Adami is a partisan one."

Dr Sant has gone back to his old tactic which he used in the past to criticise MIC for imparting factual information about the EU to schools on request. In an article called "Proxy" (The Times, April 11, 2001), he objected to this practice on the grounds that EU membership was then a controversial subject. He in fact went further. He accused Simon Busuttil of indoctrination with "a subliminal thrust".

At the time, I pointed out in a Talking Point (The Times, April 16, 2001) that I considered Dr Sant's stance as a dangerous attitude. I argued that any political party can create a controversy, be it about divorce, bird shooting or smoking and automatically youngsters would be deprived of factual information which they needed in order to make an informed judgement.

By maintaining that the referendum result is still subject to controversy, Dr Sant is letting himself into deeper contradictions. The majority of the people in Malta believe that the referendum result was a conclusive one in favour of Malta's EU membership.

A few weeks later another majority elected a political party which, as part of its political manifesto, promised to put the referendum result into practice by signing the accession treaty. Now the latter majority has made Dr Sant declare that EU membership is no longer a controversial matter, however the former majoritarian view expressed in the referendum, in which the MLP participated fully, is still a subject of controversy. This is totally illogical and baffling. As is, of course, the stance that an election result is binding forever, knowing full well that elections and their results are transient by their very nature. Which is why we have them on a regular basis at set intervals.

Back to Dr Sant's accusation that President Fenech Adami's reference to the March 2003 referendum result is a partisan one. This is totally wrong. The President of the day on matters of political controversy is bound by the Constitution to express his/her government's view. We have to assume that the speech was cleared by the Prime Minister, the same Prime Minister who leads a government that believes that the March 2003 referendum result was a vote in favour of Malta's EU membership.

Dr Sant not having succeeded in his gimmicky "day of mourning" charade, wants to prolong the controversy about Dr Fenech Adami's appointment as President by nitpicking. After all, if a President of Malta speaks about values which he/she considers to be of great importance, but are no longer seen, rightly or wrongly, to be relevant to society by the majority of the population, are we going to point a finger at a President that he is being controversial?