Three good reasons are Mr Mintoff, Dr Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici and Dr Sant. The first, we must look out for in Xarabank, a television programme boycotted by the Opposition but which nonetheless attracts more than 170,000 viewers. The programme presenter, Peppi Azzopardi, seems to have landed the eldest of the party's three leaders and I have no doubt the viewership will exceed that number on the evening Mr Mintoff appears, which will prove three things.

Why we must join Europe

First, most people are curious to see how the man is faring; second, the thorn in the side of Dr Sant shows no sign of becoming less of one and third, boycotts do not work when supporters or potential supporters, or even card-carrying apostates, know there is no way they will be found out breaking them. If Xarabank they enjoy, they will watch Xarabank once Big Brother is not around to see them doing so.

Dr Mifsud Bonnici, who has been out of political circulation for almost ten years, reappeared to create the Campaign for National Independence (CNI). He has now handed over its leadership to become once more Mr Mintoff's lieutenant. Not for the first time, Dr Mifsud Bonnici is demonstrating his ability to hold two different positions at the same time: an irrevocable "no" to membership and a readiness to decide on membership in the context of the negotiation packet being hammered out by Government.

What this will do for CNI is not difficult to predict. After the confusion raised by the merger of its leader with the man who once declared that he regretted ever anointing Dr Mifsud Bonnici as his successor - the dynasty was short-lived - CNI, which was never a viable formation, will implode.

Dr Sant, who wishes to become Prime Minister in 2004 when Malta will have joined the European Union, is another kettle of fish. A Mintoff man to his eyeballs during the late Seventies and Eighties, a successor to Mintoff's successor in the early Nineties, he came to understand the political necessity to break away from Mintoff's mould into which Dr Mifsud Bonnici had cast himself. It was necessary to move away from Mr Mintoff's policies the moment he reached the top. He became aware of the political requirement to distance himself from Mintoff and, ironically, the need to woo the sector he alienated when he flung down his gauntlet at Mr Mintoff and had two flung back at him.

The latter's re-emergence must seem like a nightmare to Dr Sant, whose pronouncements on the government's negotiations have been nothing less than apocryphal. Examples: the EU will never accept Maltese as an EU language. Malta will not have its own Commissioner in the Commission. Employment seekers and property purchasers will flood the local market. Fish and chips are doomed. Long ago, his predecessor even threw AIDS into Labour's disturbing concept of what joining the EU would do to Malta.

It may be a weird combination, that of Messrs Mintoff and Mifsud Bonnici, The steam it lets off may not be very powerful, but its very existence carries more than a whiff of a threat, unwelcome Banquos in attendance at what passes for a feast in Dr Sant's eyes. So much was acknowledged by the Leader of the Opposition at a press conference he gave after visiting Russia, last week: "...we have to wake up in this country but not in the way Mr Mintoff wishes..." It was his first reference to Front Maltin Inqumu (FMI). Dr Sant will take more notice of Mr Mintoff when the FMI is launched, in particular after his adversary appears on Xarabank.

There are better ones

FMI's energy is supposedly going to be directed at the state of the negotiations themselves. If the new alliance merely parrots the objections raised by Dr Sant, it may as well not leave the runway.

The idea that Mr Mintoff will do this has not attracted much attention. The novelty, say its proponents, lies in the possibility that Mr Mintoff may play his last card by bringing together what he had put asunder. It will be by way of making a silent confession. They are whistling in the wind. The man who broke with Dr Boffa and set up his own party in 1949 would rather die, first. As Dr Sant would rather do the same than make a public apology to the man who called his bluff and brought him down in 1998.

The Prime Minister meanwhile, has maintained a firm grip on his vision of membership and on his faith in the capabilities of the Maltese to join Europe. He is confident that the choice of the Maltese people will be in the country's interest and in that of present and future generations. The argument in favour is straightforward. However, I believe that however much this is the case, it has to be made in an ever more compelling manner.

Where Dr Sant has a problem about his alternative to membership, not least because what he has offered the electorate is essentially nebulous, Dr Fenech Adami has a simple, and, therefore, difficult, contribution to make. He must show that he understands the same electorate's desire for ever more persuasion. His own convictions, his determination to help Malta ease itself into an economic and political bloc outside which we cannot hope to compete, the hard work that has been put into the negotiations, all these have to be translated into an overwhelming case for membership.

The sudden appearance of Mr Mintoff on the scene, arm in arm with Dr Mifsud Bonnici, may well be an additional godsend. Old fears will surface. These should not be seen as a plus except in the context of a persuasive, positive, forceful pro-EU campaign. The temptation to gloat over any discomfiture this unlikely duo is causing Dr Sant will be great. It should be avoided. Nothing presents a greater challenge to the government than falling into the trap of presenting a campaign based in large measure on shallow criticism. The press may have itself a field day over the line-up against membership. It is a luxury denied the government.

The case to be made for membership is excellent. The Foreign Minister and the negotiating team have been performing on all cylinders. None of this forward momentum should be wasted. All of it should be directed specifically at those who agree with membership, at those who are wavering, and most of all at those who have been persuaded that to join the EU is akin to entering the Eighth Circle of Hell.

The long and the short of it is that Mr Mintoff, Dr Mifsud Bonnici and Dr Sant have the same political genetic make-up. Each has his reason for his opposition to entry. Together, but apart, they are self-evidently good reasons for joining Europe. There are far better ones and it is on the latter that Government should concentrate.

A hornets' nest (1)

When the Broadcasting Authority denied that the spots carried by the Malta-Europe Information Centre (MIC) were anything but informative and objective, only the biased disagreed. In fact, the spots remain a model of objective information. MIC pays PBS to run them.

The BA made its denial when the Malta Labour Party was insisting that if MIC had spots it, too, should be given a dab or two of airtime on the matter of the EU. Last January, the Authority saw no imbalance that demanded redress. Somewhat incongruously, six months later and without listening to any objections PBS might have, the BA instructed the company to carry MLP spots.

On what grounds, once it declared publicly that MIC was spotless in the objectivity of its information, it is difficult to gauge. Altogether unfathomable was another instruction to PBS. TVM was to broadcast these spots free of charge during time scheduled for commercials broadcast before coverage of the World Cup, during the interval of the World Cup and immediately after the World Cup; in fact, during the mother of all prime time.

PBS could not make heads or tails of the regulator's extraordinary decision. For only one thing, it meant a substantial loss in revenue for TVM. Its board of directors did the most natural thing in the world. It informed the Authority that it was studying the decision and taking legal advice. A few days later, it referred the matter to the courts. The court found against PBS, which has submitted more than two dozen foolscaps worth of appeals against two rulings that were awarded against it.

In parenthesis, Dr Sant asked for the resignation of the chairman. Anthony J. Tabone declined. He has presided over the restructuring of the company's radio stations and the introduction of Radio 106.6 in February, last year, a station that broadcasts Parliament and music for youths and is the most popular radio station with the U-18s. TVM is now the station most watched by the Maltese except in the area of local productions where Super One leads.

He and his board set up a task force chaired by Joe Vella Bonnici with Mario Callus and Fr Joe Borg as members. The task force was asked to draw up proposals for the restructuring of PBS, an overmanned company further overburdened with a luxurious executive and management structure (one chief per ten employees) and work practices that guarantee it a place in the red.

I understand that the main proposals submitted by the task force have been taken on board, but the radical restructuring is caught up in the business of setting up an early retirement scheme. This is currently being discussed with the GWU. When completed, PBS will be reorganised into into five operationally autonomous business units. Each led by a business unit co-ordinator who will form part of a board of management headed by the chief executive co-ordinator. There is some way to go, but once the early retirement scheme is agreed to, the repositioning of the organisation can move ahead. End of parenthesis.

Those court rulings must now be open to further rulings: whether the Nationalist Party has the right to slap on its own spots; whether Alternattiva Demokratika will be granted similar facilities; whether the Iva Movement, CNI and now FMI can knock on the doors of PBS demanding to show off their spots - without payment! More intricately, whether MIC can insist to have its spots on TVM - free. The court's decision has opened a hornets' nest.

We must now await the outcome of those appeals. That PBS has a strong case to make is not in doubt. At stake is the right of a commercial company to defend itself against its regulator when its interests are seriously prejudiced. In its appeal, PBS has called the conduct (ghemil) of the Authority unreasonable, unjust, oppressive and illegal conduct.

Pamela Grace Page

"I can confirm that some British insurance companies are reneging on their legal responsibility towards clients covered under these policies" - Dr Frank Portelli, director and CEO St Philip's Hospital.

"I feel that Ms Page's letter is timely as it gives many of your readers the opportunity of seeing how some British travel insurances are abusing their clients and failing to keep their commitments, to their client's dissatisfaction," Dr Louis Buhagiar.

"Quite frankly, it is about time that the wider public both in Malta and here in the UK are made aware of what is going on with regard to the activities of Dr Adrian Vella, Dr Louis Buhagiar, Dr Frank Portelli and St Philip's Hospital" - Graham J. Reed, medical claims investigator.

"I think that the real problem is not a medical issue but a commercial and financial one between foreign private insurances (who fail to inform British tourists of their rights) and local private physicians (who again prefer referring privately insured tourists to private hospitals, failing to inform of their rights, for more than obvious reasons)" - Dr Louis Deguara, Minister of Health.

Where does all that leave Pamela Grace Page, a British holidaymaker who fell ill here? Well, so far, short of Lm674 and pretty miffed by what she has understandably described as a "dreadful" experience. This included a bill for Lm674.60 for 36 hours care at St Philip's. Of these, accommodation accounted for Lm300, Dr Buhagiar's fee, Lm130, ambulance transport Lm50 and medical fluids, injections, etc, for the remainder. Nothing, it is apparent, comes cheap. What many ask is whether it should come so expensively? Heaven knows what the bill would have risen to had she not been transferred to St Luke's, where a health agreement between Malta and the United Kingdom entitled her to free treatment in the first place.

According to IMR, the company had requested St Philip's, last April, after another tiff where it was threatened with litigation over non-payment of St Philip's Hospital bills, to inform all new patients who presented themselves for treatment that no guarantees would be issued. By the same argument, of course, the insurers also should make that clear to their clients.

In the middle of this wrangle between insurers and doctors-and-private-hospital, who seemed to have found solace in placing the blame on the other, most of the evidence points to the unpleasant fact that the patient concerned was of no particular importance. One may judiciously ask why insurers charge the premium they do if they then argue that the premium holder cannot be guaranteed costs? As one may reasonably ask how a private hospital justifies a Lm300 bill for a one-night stay? And Dr Buhagiar why he thinks that a fee of Lm130, which Mrs Page claims he told her husband he had reduced to that not inconsiderable sum for "humanitarian" reasons, is equitable - at Malta prices?

It is an ugly picture. Each side thinks it is the other that is monstrous and unsightly. They both are. One serious outcome is the possibility that Malta's chances of becoming a medical hub centre, by offering excellent medical services for people from overseas at a reasonable price, is harmed by these shenanigans.