Twenty years ago the country went to the polls on EU membership. The Fenech Adami government had successfully negotiated terms with the European Commission, with derogations that were considered necessary.
The Labour Party had previously frozen the membership request in 1996, and in 2003 they again did what they could to defeat the referendum. They did it through its party media, which included one Joseph Muscat.
They tried every scare tactic in the book.
Their billboards said “full” membership would only mean an EU financial packet of one million euros a year.
The EU would open the door to free abortion laws and the island would be swamped with EU nationals, they said. They held up their unused voting card, urging voters to boycott the ballot box.
Following the result, the Labour Party tried overturning the people’s verdict, organising a public meeting similar to Donald Trump’s infamous January 6 address near the White House after his electoral loss to Joe Biden.
On the podium, there stood a defiant Alfred Sant and an ambitious Muscat at his side with a road map hidden in his trousers.
The interesting irony is that both of these ‘partnershippers’ ultimately sought party backing to run and get elected as members of the EU Parliament.
Labour’s success is primarily based upon spin and short-term gains.
One cannot forget the Jean Paul Sofia inquiry saga where Robert Abela first whipped his parliamentary group to ridicule to vote against a motion for an inquiry. And then, within days, he flipped and did the exact opposite, leaving his backbenchers looking like a busload of obedient idiots.
According to Abela, today’s disastrous traffic situation is due to Lawrence Gonzi’s incompetent administration which had left the national economy in ruins.
He banks his bluff on people forgetting that in January 2012, after four years of international economic depression and soaring oil prices, the Fitch Ratings Agency substantially downgraded the rating of no less than five EU countries, yet maintained Malta’s A sovereign rating in place.
It is clear to everyone today that while the GDP statistics have gone up, the quality of life has gone down, unable to cope with the greed-induced increase in population.
It is well known that an unsustainable economic policy has major drawbacks and in time will deliver more problems than a stable one does.
Only days ago, Abela finally admitted that “progress has brought with it its own inconveniences”.
It took the fear of another summer of power cuts across the island to finally force some truth out of him.
Progress in Abela’s mind consists of milking the state coffers to make millionaires into multi-millionaires
Inconveniences? They are everywhere.
Take the energy sector, a huge problem caused by a mix of political corruption and years of overheating the economy.
Abela now decides to rent a diesel-powered temporary energy source at a cost which is four times the cost of the only new social housing project we have seen started and completed in the last 11 years.
Property prices are way beyond the reach of ordinary taxpayers. So Abela creates a €10,000 subsidy payable over 10 years to first-home buyers, and by the afternoon, his construction mates bump up their asking prices accordingly.
Progress in Abela’s mind consists of milking the state coffers to make millionaires into multi-millionaires in a construction industry based on thousands of low-wage labourers who then overburden the health and other public services.
Progress is in the desperation of these under-paid or out-of-work labourers who rummage through rubbish bags collecting 10c refund plastic bottles.
Progress is an elite political and business class that owns luxury yachts and large portfolios of rental properties while ordinary folk are expected to be grateful for receiving a small pre-election handout cheque in the mail that reminds them who to vote for.
Progress is appointing useless police commissioners and regiments of corruptible persons of trust in every department, from transport to social services, who are paid to undermine the electoral system by inventing voting scams, and who have the added go-ahead from Castille to make a little on the side.
Progress is Social Security Minister Falzon warning the media not to refer to the €6 million permanent disability pension racket, which directly involved officials in his ministry and the personal driver of another minister, as “theft”.
Progress is a broken judicial system where criminal proceedings take years to complete or are only show trials intentionally designed to render a perverse acquittal.
Progress was Malta’s greylisting status, which has remained with us in the form of unnecessary questioning and suspicion when depositing or withdrawing even petty monies from our bank account – while the real dirty money coming from fake ‘consultancy fees’ invented by and for politicians – sails past any inspection or FIAU interest.
Progress is spending €400,000 on a tent and the glitter promotion of a Metro project simply to fool us into thinking that Labour have solutions to the problems their own lack of planning has created.
Progress is the 2019 fantasy opening of St Luke’s International Medical Tourism Centre comprising a state-of-the-art billboard which somehow cost us something in the region of €450,000,000.
We have never had it better. Believe me.
Malta needs saving.
Eddie Aquilina