Where's Labour's vision?

With its back to the wall in the aftermath of the election, the Labour Party came around to the inevitable. It now grudgingly accepts that Malta is to join the European Union. Rebuffed over and over again by the electorate, and confronted with the reality of membership, it found itself at the end of the rope: either go for the unthinkable, or switch policy. Almost inevitably, it chose the latter, and we now have their reluctant and resentful acceptance of membership.

It is an opportunistic acceptance, the ticket towards electability and towards a badly needed image of reasonableness. In shedding the rabid anti-EU focus, it found a way to improve on a negative image built on a wrongheaded past - obstinate in government and spiteful in Opposition.

Yet the EU issue remains handy and useful. The Labour Party combines nominal acceptance of membership with a readiness to use the EU issue as a battering ram against the government. Just watch or listen to their media any day.

The MLP is far from embracing a future for the country in the EU. It sees membership only as a test of the country's endurance, something the country has to suffer through in the coming decades. For the Labour Party, membership will be a test of the country's ability to endure pain, and the party is there to shift the pain away from its constituents.

Now, the party leaders charge arrogance when they are reminded that they are being put to another test, but that is the truth. They failed the test on the EU, and now they are being measured again on their readiness to embrace the social dialogue proposed by the government. The Opposition is being offered a part in the formation of a new social pact. They will fail this latest test if they keep putting partisanship ahead of the national good. So far, all we had was the Labour Party's disparaging and caustic response to the budget.

On the budget, they charge the government with a lack of credibility. That's a rich one coming from a leadership who has been constant only in its obstinacy and in its penchant for U-turns.

On the other side, for the Nationalists, EU membership has been a vision stretching over many decades. In EU membership, Nationalists find what it will take for Malta to have political and economic take-off. But for Labour Party, the EU is still not a vision. Instead, the EU has become their day-to-day propaganda tool towards victory at the next election, which is why they're acting like the next election is only weeks away.

You really can't blame them for projecting their own opportunism onto the rest of us. They accuse the government of having an obsession with EU membership and using the EU issue as a political distraction, an opiate for the electorate, and a ruse to hide failure. They point the finger at the government for its opportunism and obstinacy - in short, for the very qualities that have marked the Labour Party for many decades.

This is a sample of what Dr Sant had to say this week, as reported in maltastar.com on Thursday: "Eddie Fenech Adami's leitmotif was the European Union and that membership is meant to lead the country forward. The prime minister is more interested in the compliments from Brussels than leading the country in the best interest of Maltese families."

Or, a few Wednesdays ago, in The Times: "Joining the EU has been touted as the be-all and end-all of reasonable policies. Yet, no effort was made to analyse and contain the undoubted growth in government spending that will result as we comply with the wide panoply of EU rules and regulations."

There you have it. The EU is just a mass of regulations that Labour is there to protect us from, and they use voodoo arithmetic to add up the costs of and benefits from membership. Jabs at the EU have replaced the pre-election vitriol as the fodder gushing through their media. Up through the election, they went knocking on factory doors, whipping up fear and paranoia. Now they claim, "we told you so", even though blaming any current challenges on the EU is like blaming a fever on the thermometer or on the nurse.

Although our long-term path is set securely within the EU, the present and the immediate future present particular challenges that require steady hands and credibility, attributes that Labour has been short of.

If you follow the Labour Party's media, you would not know it, but we are actually in the middle of an international slowdown that has bedevilled the markets for our exporters of both goods and services.

It would be much worse at this time, but for the wisdom of a voting public that saw through the shallowness of Labour's solutions. It would be worse if the referendum and the election had gone the other way. But Malta had to live through the pre-referendum and pre-election uncertainties, which did not help the cause of economic recovery.

The election and referendum results were unambiguous, but they came after many opportunities were lost in the uncertainty generated by the opponents of EU membership. The Prime Minister is right on the mark when he predicts a stable future, after 13 years of the accession process.

In his words, "That was a period when Malta lost many investment opportunities because of the instability caused by the MLP's policies. That was something other applicant countries had not gone through since their political parties were largely in favour of their countries joining the EU." This difference, among others, was conveniently ignored in the leader of the Opposition's comparison of Malta's growth with that of the other accession countries.

The international slowdown is not the only challenge. There is also the restructuring of industries that are otherwise unsustainable. Blaming the government for the transition to sustainability is ridiculous. Labour's solution is continued protection, and that's no solution. It's only a stopgap one.

EU membership has expedited the inevitable fiscal consolidation that has become a more urgent task if we want to stay on track for the euro. Lastly, the time has come to ensure that social welfare is put on a sustainable footing. Unfortunately, we have an Opposition that has excelled at spreading paranoia, doom and gloom. True to form, now they are spreading stories about how the government will cut or eliminate social welfare programmes. They have long been crying wolf, and it looks as if they'll do it again this time.

One might well ask: What new ideas emerged from Alfred Sant's criticism of the budget? Shockingly, there was none, not one single proposal except some harking back to how Labour had got it just right when Dr Sant was at the helm! Doesn't the country deserve a better opposition than this, one which should be bubbling with ideas and presenting a decent alternative? Yet, after two hours in front of the cameras in his budget reply, Dr Sant was unable to provide the Maltese public with even a glimpse of the alternatives available to solve the larger budget deficit that has emerged.

Had the Labour Party replaced its leaders in the aftermath of the election debacle, we probably would not have such an unnecessary display of contrariness or the unwillingness to come to an agreement on what best serves the country. Instead, we have to witness another wearisome show of breast-beating and bravado. On present trends, the Labour Party is likely to fail the current test of its honesty and maturity.

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