Labour's deafening discord

The Labour Party has suggested that the government take imports under its wing. If Labour has its way we will be regressing to a bulk-buying system we already bitterly experienced under old Labour. Now, this newest Labour has come out with its second wish: divorce. I will not delve into the merits and demerits of the issue per se but I will say that I am very confused by Labour's ambiguous and conflicting statements on the subject.

Last December, the president of the Labour Youth Forum said: "As a progressive party, one of the crucial issues for us is civil rights. In a country that has been part of the EU for five years, we can no longer have a situation where, when discussion arises on certain rights, such issues are sidelined, swept under the carpet or gagged by the conservative authorities". The Labour leader immediately committed himself to table a divorce Bill if elected to govern, adding he would allow his MPs a free vote. Last month, addressing Labour's annual general conference, and last Wednesday on national television during the programme Dissett, he repeated the same pledge with the same condition.

This contrasts substantially with declarations made by Labour MP Evarist Bartolo, a Labour shadow minister, when, during the television discussion programme Bondiplus, he said he expected the PL to go to the polls with a clear proposal to introduce divorce when in government" (timesofmalta.com, February 3).

Mr Bartolo warned that if Labour candidates did not agree with divorce then they should not contest the next general election on Labour's ticket. To be quite honest, Mr Bartolo has a point. Candidates contesting under any political party's umbrella should toe the party line and subscribe to their party's electoral manifesto and policies laid out therein.

So this hot potato will not only be a burning question in the country, it is also a sizzling issue within Labour's rank and file.

To conclude the 10-day PL conference, Joseph Muscat said that although Labour will remain close to the Church it will not be part of it. He also declared that under a Labour government the state will not interfere with the individual's choices (February 7). What he meant exactly is anybody's guess. All I can say is that vague statements uttered by leaders of a country could throw the doors wide open to a free for all!

Mind-boggling sweeping statements are highly condemnable as they inevitably lead to unnecessary speculation. For example: Labour has often reiterated, rightly so, that it is against abortion and probably against euthanasia too. But, and here lies another crux of the matter, is Labour against abortion without any reservations? During the television programme Dissett, we heard one of Labour's deputy leaders, Toni Abela's take on the subject.

He said that abortion is bad but, and here's the catch, abortion in his book should be tolerated under "special" circumstances. In fact, way back in 2003, he had written: "I agree with abortion if the life of the mother is in danger, in the case of rape and if it is certain that the unborn foetus will be a severely handicapped child." Since appearing on Dissett, Dr Abela has performed a 360 degree change of heart. He has now retracted his 2003 writings and his verbal pro-abortion stance. But, I ask, where lies the honest truth?

Not so long ago I mentioned the tragic "disposal" of female babies in China. Well, now I needn't go that far away: discrimination between healthy babies, the not-so-healthy ones, normal pregnancies and forced ones, has been openly considered in Malta. Just to play devil's advocate where was Dr Abela going to draw the line when abortion is justified? After all, many a wife could probably claim being violently raped by their own "drunken" husbands, ergo, by his reasoning they could abort too, right? We are treading on very shaky ground indeed here.

It is to be noted that, throughout this controversy, Dr Muscat, the leader of the Labour Party, said, brace yourselves... that he was unaware of what his deputy leader had said, maintaining that Dr Abela was always against abortion!

They say that ignorance is bliss. Perhaps Dr Muscat was also ignorant of the fact that a group of Labour fanatics had created a site, We Hate Lawrence Gonzi And The PN, on facebook.com. Perhaps he was oblivious to the fact that a Labour candidate spewed heresy, blasphemy and hatred towards the PN in the GWU daily (January 15) alleging that God must be Nationalist and much, much worse.

We simply cannot have an aspiring Prime Minister taking one stance on mega-controversial issues and his aspiring ministers and diehard minions taking a different one. We cannot have the leader of a "progressive" movement turning a Nelson's eye on unacceptable extremes of political rivalry. Perhaps during his sermon on Sunday, the Labour leader will take five minutes to explain why he is turning a deaf ear to the cacophony resounding from the Labour camp.