Status, price, and risk

Status, price, and risk are the three major issues that will turn this election. With the exception of the EU question, the two major parties' programmes are essentially identical. So it is the voters' decisions on these three questions that will lean them one way or another.

Status here refers to Malta's status. What will Malta's word be worth if Malta votes an anti-EU membership party into power? In less than seven years, the country would have changed its mind three times. For that reason alone, the EU will give low priority to negotiating any kind of deal with us.

The question of EU membership in our generation ends on Saturday, whether we like it or not. Alfred Sant thinks not. He has referred to the case of Norway, which so far has applied twice to join the EU (only to have the government's case rejected in a referendum), and may yet apply again to join by 2007.

But the Norwegian case shows how long Malta would have to wait before it could apply again with a shred of credibility. Norway waited some 20 years between one application and another. If it applies to join a third time, it would have waited another 10 years.

It has been by waiting this long that Norway has avoided acquiring the reputation of a maverick country. Malta would not be able to avoid maverick status if it changes its mind on EU membership on Saturday. This election will tell us if the majority of voters care very much about what the rest of the world, but especially Europe, thinks about their country.

Let us come to the second issue: price. This refers to the emotional price that pro-EU membership Labour voters have to pay in this election. Their mind is clearly telling them that EU membership is vital not just for the prosperity of the country, but also for the struggle against inequality and for progressive politics. But they are also loyal to their party.

The leadership of the MLP has somewhat eased the issue for these Labourites. Under the current leadership, the MLP is not quickly recognisable as a party of the centre-left. Its promised tax break, as Lino Spiteri has pointed out, is regressive: it gives more money to the better off than it gives to the struggling wage-earners. Which party of the left does that?

Then there is the troubled relationship that the MLP currently has with the Party of European Socialists (PES), the collective grouping of European social democrat parties. In October, this column reported that at the Convention on Europe, Dr Sant's allies consisted of a small marginal group made up almost entirely of right-wing nationalists, neo-liberals, and radical liberals (that is, libertarians, who have collaborated with the militantly pro-abortion Italian Partito Radicale).

This situation has persisted to the point that the general secretary of the PES, Antony Beumer, has warned that the MLP is endangering its relationship with the PES. According to Karl Schembri's report in the last edition of The Malta Independent on Sunday, Mr Beumer went on to say that not only does the MLP have odd allies, Dr Sant is hardly showing up for PES meetings.

An MLP candidate in Saturday's election, Sharon Ellul Bonici, declared to Mr Schembri: "I would say that not even the MLP would want to side with the European Socialists. They have different positions which cannot be reconciled, they are like parties from different planets."

Ms Ellul Bonici predicted that there would be a number of resignations from the MLP if the party changed its EU policy. She would be one. A second Sant government may well suffer from the same parliamentary instability as the first, if it tries to modify its stand on the EU.

So the issue of emotional price is this: will pro-EU MLP voters see a vote for the yes parties as too high a price to pay? Or will they reason that they can celebrate a yes victory under a socialist banner, that they would have every reason to think of a yes victory as their victory, too - because it would help bring the MLP back to the same planet of European socialism?

The third issue, risk, is easiest to state in the form of a list. Dr Sant's evaluation of Malta's economic prospects outside the EU flies in the face of what every independent economist and economic and financial authority has stated.

In addition, Dr Sant wants to boost Malta's financial services. Yet the chairman of the Malta Financial Services Authority, Joe Bannister, has said that EU membership is "crucial" if Malta as a financial centre is to expand. The financial experts of the Big Four audit firms agree with Prof. Bannister.

Dr Sant wants to boost tourism. Yet the leaders in Malta's tourist trade say that EU membership is vital for this.

Dr Sant says that EU membership would hamper Malta's trade relationship with the US. The Malta-US Chamber of Commerce says the opposite.

No one truly knows where a Sant government will find the funds for its projects for roads and the environment. EU membership would provide Lm90 million in development aid for the first three years of membership alone.

So the issue of risk is this: what weight do Maltese voters give to the opinion of experts? Will they decide that Dr Sant can bend the world to his will?