We have been warned

When Malta joined the EU, there were fewer members than today's 27 and negotiations were not easy. On the Maltese side the treaty was approved in a referendum, but the socialists did not accept the people's verdict. Immediately, the Government called a national election, in which the socialists were badly beaten. Since then, they have been claiming that they now accept the people's decision.

Well, not exactly. Last week we found out that they will be back to their old tricks. If the MLP is returned to power, it has promised to reopen negotiations on two parts of the treaty. Now the EU is made up of 27 members and each of them will have to agree on any concessions. Guess what? The socialists want to start a fight on the dockyards. The same dockyards which have gobbled up some one million euros over recent decades in wasted subsidies will then be able to receive more giveaways from the Government. On the other issue, agriculture, the socialists should tell us what they will go begging for.

Labourites would love a re-enactment of the ordeal which Britain and NATO went through with Mintoff, when they were sort of blackmailed into paying for their own exit from Malta. This time around, the Cold War is over and there will not be any Lord Carrington and other NATO pushovers. Instead, Alfred Sant will get a very cold reception, not least from the new east European members of the EU, who can be counted on to give him not a Royal Navy salute but the other kind of salute, telling him to buzz off.

The socialists should tell us what step two will be. When the rest of the EU tells them off, what will they do? Don't forget: Sant is no slouch when it comes to obstinacy. They don't call him Stonewall Sant for nothing.

Up to last Sunday the socialist media were claiming that the fact that the Prime Minister had not yet called the election was causing uncertainty. If they think that was uncertainty, wait until a socialist government starts a row with the EU, and those who have never experienced the tension that is the hallmark of Malta's socialists will find out what real tension is like.

The Maltese socialists suffer from a bad case of the smarts. No wonder their leadership is mainly doctor this, doctor that and doctor the-other. They are the experts. For example, first they promised that they will force the economy into a four per cent growth rate; but now that it has actually been growing at four per cent, they want six per cent. How will they do this? Elementary: by such techniques as building a library in Mellieha and an underground car park in Hamrun, repairing the Mtarfa tower and il-Maċina as well as other such measures. They walk tall and talk big, about such things as the science of governance, and the art of planning, and about mathematical econometrics, and they use difficult words, like real convergence, GDP deflators and valourisation - or is it valorization? Trying to get a deeper understanding of what their leader had to say in his recent Mellieha walkabout, I looked up the word 'valorization' on the Harvard website, but there was nothing there.

In the recent PES meeting held in Malta, the European socialists sang the praises of the euro and Malta's adoption of the currency while the local ones had only bad things to say about it. No surprise there. Just in case you were born yesterday, you may soon find out that our socialists are not European socialists. In Malta, they are still Third World socialists. Being the home of so many econometric scientists who hate the euro, Malta's socialists won't let up on the issue of devaluation.

They wanted a devaluation of the lira. Instead of getting €233 for your every Lm100 you had on January 1, they wanted you to get 15 per cent less, or more precisely €198. We'd all have loved that.

Here's a suggestion for the doctor: when he asks the EU for a revision of the Accession Treaty to let him throw more money down the drain via the drydocks, he might as well see whether they will also let him devalue the lira. Or is it the euro? I'm confused.

Along with their trade-union political buddies, the socialists complain bitterly and denounce the Government non-stop if a grocer charges an extra euro cent on a kilo of luncheon meat. When the socialists demand devaluation, they must think that they are talking to a stupid electorate that does not realise what a 15 per cent devaluation would have done to our cost of living. I bet if this Government had devalued the lira, the General Workers' Union would be out in the streets, demanding compensation.

micfal@maltanet.net