Roamer's Column

If only we could rally to the call made by the prime minister, last Wednesday, when he spoke to the nation on TV and announced the referendum date. More to the point, if only we could all act in the five weeks ahead with the same dignity he projected.

The issue is simple and straightforward. For the past 32 years, ever since Malta signed an association agreement with the then European Economic Community, we have been travelling in the direction of union with a continent that was constantly changing and taking on new forms. A nation's story has this inbuilt inclination to progress unless that nation is kept down by foreign powers or distrusted by its own leaders. The story of the nations of Europe has demonstrated this graphically, most vividly after the velvet revolutions that brought to an end the Soviet Union's hegemony of eastern Europe in 1989.

In its own way Malta made a contribution to that process of liberation when it hosted Presidents Bush and Gorbachev in Malta on a wild and windy December weekend in 1989. The two leaders had not come here for tea and trivialities. They were ushering in a new world order, tearing up Yalta, or so it was hoped at the time. And for the countries of eastern Europe, a new world order did indeed emerge. They blinked into the sunlight of political freedom and - looked westwards; to the European Union, to the United States, to NATO, even.

For the first time in a millennium, countries from the Atlantic to the borders of Russia were stumbling towards one another in one of those rare moments in history when the aim of leaders was not enlargement by conquest but community by consent. Slowly, the first tentative steps were taken to see how life on the European continent could be re-ordered in a way that past strife would be replaced with future co-operation, division with unity.

The European Economic Community became the European Community and after that the European Union. Changes were taking place at every level - political, economic, social, cultural. The entire creativity of a continent seemed to be committed to the grande idée of fusing together the energies of western, capitalist countries plus a social conscience with eastern, once communist countries yearning for the experience of free, political, economic development and all the challenges attendant upon this vision.

Malta, too, changed between 1970 and the present. At the end of the period, it was no longer a fortress economy. It gained its independence. It became a republic and for most of the last 16 years, it sought its place in the same community of nations that its eastern European friends were seeking. This was a natural evolution for an island state, offshore to Europe and of Europe, its credentials European, its hopes European, its ambitions European, its heritage European, its economy European, its political instincts European, its security European.

During the last four years, Malta has striven hard to join the Union as a member. Last December, after successfully concluding negotiations with Brussels, Malta was invited to join the European Union. The prime minister, Dr Fenech Adami, accepted that invitation. The next step is for the prime minister to fly to Athens in April so that on the 16th of that month, he will sign the treaty of membership in the EU. But before that, as he told the nation last Wednesday, he will, as he had promised, hand over the mandate granted to him by the electorate in 1998 so that it will "be you who show that you agree with this decision; a decision that I am sure everybody agrees will decide our future, that of our children and of our country"

Which brings me smoothly to the next point.

At last

I chastised the Nationalist Party, last Sunday, for not getting things right on its billboards That same day, I read about another that had been put up in the battle for the Yes vote in the March referendum. There it was. IVA. The flag of Malta fluttering next to the stars of Europe and the simple, therefore telling, copy. "For us. For our children. For our country."

This expresses what should be the theme of the referendum campaign perfectly. The message encapsulates everything the government wishes to convey. Where many of the others say nothing to the passing motorist, this one says it all. Now, bring all the others down and replace them with this articulate gem. For us. For our children. For our country. At last, the perfect billboard.

The time for philosophising is over. What is in it for our children? What is there in membership for us? What will membership do for the country? Here is the substance not only of the referendum effort. It may reasonably be employed in the local council and general election campaigns (with the politics of the localities and the country tacked on).

In the wider general election binge, of course, a successful Yes vote will underpin the way the election will go. The superstructure of that campaign requires to be addressed on a far wider front, which the Yes return will inform.

What can he mean?

It is written about a wily, old diplomat that when he was informed of the death of an equally crafty old dodger, he remarked: "Now, what did he mean by that?" I was reminded of this story when I read the letter sent to the Prime Minister by the Leader of the Opposition.

What could Dr Sant have meant when he asked for a majority vote of 60 per cent for the outcome of the referendum for it to be honoured? This means, in effect, that if 40.01 per cent, a clear minority, vote No, the weight of the bulkier 59.99 per cent will have to make way for the choice of a minority. This makes as much democratic sense as saying that with 40 per cent of the people voting Labour in a general election, its opponents would lose the election!

Such a situation would be infinitely worse than the one that hit us in 1981. The Nationalist Party spent five and a half years contesting the result of that election in the legislature that followed. Finally, it forced through a change in the Constitution to ensure that whichever political party won the magical fifty per cent plus one of the votes would be assured of at least a one-seat overall majority in Parliament. Cuckoos, it seems, are chirping early this spring. Secondly, on what fresh democratic grounds is the prime minister being asked to hold an election before the referendum?

As to the first, Dr Sant's approach is that a 60 per cent vote would change the mechanism from being consultative to a definitive one binding on both sides. I have searched high and low to discover whether the Opposition to the EU of any other western country has ever made this sort of demand on the government of the day. I found none.

A referendum is a referendum is a referendum. In Malta's case it was promised by the Nationalist Party in Opposition during the 1998 election campaign. The promise placed in the party's manifesto declared that a government formed by the party would negotiate entry into the EU on the best possible terms. It could have been left at that. Instead, Dr Fenech Adami went beyond what was required of him. Once negotiations were completed, he committed any government formed by him to hold a referendum for the electorate to make the final decision. Nothing could have been fairer or straighter than that.

What is surprising is that this has to be repeated over and over again because Dr Sant keeps arguing that any referendum thus called would not be deemed binding on a Labour government should one be returned to power at a general election. It would, he says as he proceeds to muddy the water, be better and more acceptable to hold elections, first. On what grounds it would be either is not spelt out, or the spelling is such that it fetches an impressive zero out of a possible ten.

None of this would matter so much if Dr Sant were not on record as stating, after the 1992 elections, that the government had a mandate even then to negotiate Malta's membership into Europe. He then backtracked on that. Nor would it matter so much if Tony Zarb were not also on record, in the 1990 publication of Int u L-Ewropa, that the decision to join Europe or no should be taken in a referendum. And last Sunday, Dr Lawrence Gonzi quoted in Il-Mument what Dr Joe Brincat, the deputy leader of the MLP, had written in June, 1998 in this newspaper: "...why should we shy away from giving each citizen the right to vote in secret, so the issue tinheles mill-irbit politiku?... Ir-referenda huma aktar diretti u demokratici" (is stripped of any political connotation... Referenda are more specific and democratic).

Keep the objective in sight

This business of the referendum and the attempt to wriggle out of it by bringing in the need for a general election before holding the first is democratically meaningless. Dr Sant would do better, for his own reputation in European eyes and for that of the party he leads, to admit that he is beavering away at nothing. 'Strue. He should call on his supporters to exercise their No vote if that is how they feel about membership and await the electorate's judgment. Dr Sant's real problem is that it is not only the Yes vote that is against him. It is history.

Increasingly, Dr Sant's attitude to the historic moment seems to miss the point of it all. He is not interested in the moment itself but in whopping red herrings. So whopping that his regular half-page in The Times was expanded to a full one, last Wednesday, in an attempt to explain his latest approach to percentages. "Prelapsarian", he headed the piece. My computer wriggled a red line under the word and gave me no correction when I asked for one. Mugged up my Thesaurus and Collins Cobuild to track the word down. Failed. It was not important anyway, as the word featured only once at the end of his article where he remarked that some people told him he was living in prelapsarian times. For all I know they may be right.

The issue, it has to be kept being pointed out, is not a referendum that has already received a democratic clearance at the last elections. It is EU membership. Do you agree that Malta should become a member of the European Union in the enlargement that is to take place on May 1, 2004? For those who are keen on symbolism, the date is almost 40 years since Malta gained its independence (and in fact 40 years to the month if the independence time-table had been adhered to). The argument should be all about agreeing or disagreeing with membership?

The alternative presented by Dr Sant, first Switzerland in the Med and then, when that had become too much of a standing joke and everybody had had his fill of Swiss chocolate, Swiss clocks, Alpine scenery and cows mooing over hillsides straight out of Disney, with buttercups and edelweiss everywhere, there was the switch to 'partnership'. For this form of agreement that would still need to be thrashed out were Dr Sant to be returned to power, the Opposition Leader is making claims the truth of which is constantly and flatly being contradicted by people like Günter Verheugen, Giorgio Boggio, Ronald Gallimore to name but three.

Add Romano Prodi for good measure and his crystal-clear pronouncement, last Thursday, that any alternative to membership would be similar to agreements being drawn up between the EU and North African countries. "Given Malta's features, (the results of the negotiations) are also the best that any team of negotiators of any candidate country managed to get".

Malta will get nothing, or as Mr Verheugen emphatically put it when he was interviewed on Bondi + (TVM) last Tuesday, "absolutely nothing," if Malta does not join the EU. You cannot get less than that. The Labour Party's claim that Maltese students will obtain Leonardo and Socrates funds from the Union was "clearly wrong". Last Tuesday, we had the EU ambassador, Ronald Gallimore, confirming the fact that outside the EU, Malta would not benefit from educational programmes.

And, back to Mr Verheugen, would Malta be able to subsidise the dockyard if Malta chose to wander down the untrodden partnership lane? "Definitely not". That sounded quite clear to viewers whom Mr Verheugen reminded that Dr Sant knew, and was told, that agriculture would not be exempt from any free trade agreement.

Where, then, is partnership's beef? Where the membership sirloin? We know what the EU membership sirloin is like. We are certain it is made in Europe. Its recipe is explained in abundant detail in the government's negotiating documents and in subsequent texts. Not so partnership. This seems to be made anywhere, everywhere, with anybody - somehow. It has no origin. But, as the GWU leader, Mr Zarb quaintly remarked about partnership: "...as we know it now, is closer to the GWU's position, but the concept still has to be developed further". Tell us more. The concept as the GWU understands it so far, for example.

The questions to the beef's whereabouts are what should be at the centre of the campaign that has now to run its course until March 8. Digressions from these paths are just that, attempts to sideline the positive and detailed package negotiated by government for Malta. The government and the party that forms it should see this distinctly and, as they say in cricket, keep their eyes on the ball. Given the propensity to grind truth into the ground by opponents of membership, a this-is-true aide memoire and a this-is-false checklist should be part of any pro-EU government campaign.