Like beauty, national interest seems to be in the eye of the beholder. Those terribly abused words – national interest – bring back such horrible memories of Labour past, and we shall hear them more frequently as the European Parliament debate on Malta’s passports sale scheme draws near.
National unity was the buzzword this Christmas, as the government slowly revved up, in different ways, that old Labour mantra of “Malta first and foremost” – a Dom Mintoff brainchild for the brainless.
Anyone who lived the golden years of Labour in the 1970s and 1980s knows exactly what Labour’s definition of our national interest and national unity was: muzzle it, or else.
Mintoff fed an infantile brand of nationalism to his gullible supporters. Everything he did, and there was much he shouldn’t have, was branded within this one mantra that is repeated to this day by people who weren’t even born when he was treating this country like his fiefdom.
His nationalism was built upon that infuriating isolationist mentality that plagues the island. He exploited his supporters’ feeling of “us and them”, of us and the rest of the world, a world which, once you leave this island you realise, generally ignores us and is often unaware we even exist.
Our Prime Minister is trying hard to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, promising in his new year’s message that Malta will be thrust onto the world stage in the coming years, with a wealth of events ranging from CHOGM in 2015, the EU Presidency in 2017, and cultural capital of Europe in 2018.
We’re just going to be the venue for the CHOGM because another country was too principled to host it. The EU presidency, as the name itself implies, is all about EU and not about Malta which would be its face for a short while.
As for the prospect of being a cultural capital, that is more promising, because that promotes our culture and identity, that same identity the cash-for-passports scheme ridicules.
The president of that near moribond General Workers’ Union, Victor Carachi, told us in his end of year message that Malta’s political battles need to be kept under the local radar, that we should not wash our dirty linen in other countries “if we really believe in a healthy and active democracy”. What he suggests is the very opposite of democracy.
Does Carachi think we still live in the times when Mintoff banned a UK newspaper from Malta because it did not carry a reply he wanted published?
Does he actually think the international backlash over the cash-for-passports scheme was instigated locally? Does the GWU president not have Internet access to see how the world media operates or does he just read his union’s newspaper, which is increasingly beginning to sound like the Pravda of old?
For Carachi, criticism of the government he supports in international media and fora is partisanship. Maybe in his world it is, because the recent endorsement by the GWU of the passports sale scheme stank of partisanship, if not servitude. Disagreeing on something on a point of principle is not partisanship. Speaking out against something as despicable as the IIP scheme is not partisanship, but a political and civil responsibility. To speak up against what is intrinsically wrong, here and abroad, is in the true national interest.
Malta is not going to war. That is where national unity may be vital, although not necessary, as the experience of other countries shows. It is actually because this country needs a “healthy and active democracy” that discussion on all issues should be unfettered. But obviously, we all know where this is going.
Government is concerned at the approaching European Parliament debate, and with reason.
It is not just Malta’s cash-for-passports scheme that is ruffling feathers in Europe. British media is reporting with alarm how Bulgaria and Romania are offering passports to minority or ethnic groups living in non-EU states including Moldova, Macedonia, Serbia, Ukraine and Turkey. They have political reasons for that, but the end result is the same.
The fear is that with their new EU citizenship many would go to seek work in the UK. EU passports are fast becoming an EU-wide issue, and it is naïve at best to think that Malta can ever stay under the radar. The UK Mail online dumped Malta with Romania and Bulgaria on the very day that our Prime Minister was boasting in his shamelessly propagandist New Year’s video address that all the eyes of the world will be on Malta in the years to come. Yes, maybe, but for all the wrong reasons.
Maybe one should spell it out to them once more that attacking the government is not attacking Malta, no matter what their leader may think
Fearing what the PN MEPs might tell the European Parliament, the government will now be racheting up the talk on a common front in the national interest to try and pressurise the PN to keep mute in Brussels. Labour’s own MEPs have tried this already.
Only last month, they criticised the PN attacks “against Malta” in Europe. Maybe one should spell it out to them once more that attacking the government is not attacking Malta, no matter what their leader may think.
The Labour portal Maltastar tried to reproduce what the MEPs said in their version of what passes for English: “Maltese and Gozitan people without slightest doubt expect in the European Parliament, Malta will present one face – that of national unity where we forget our personal interests and partisan views to ensure we achieve the best for country.”
The Labour MEPs want to “first and foremost” work in Malta’s national interest, and want all Maltese MEPs to put aside their “partisan views” and personal interests (what personal interests do Labour MEPs have to think this way?). That the European Parliament is divided along partisan lines, as in any normal democracy, appears to elude them. In which case, Labour is proposing to set up a Malta Party at the European Parliament, which would have great lobby power no doubt, with Malta’s meagre six seats.
The Labour MEPs went on to list the grave, unpatriotic acts by PN MEPs since the change in government. David Casa, they said, collected a petition against Malta and the Maltese government’s position on immigration. How shameful of him to think that Labour’s position on pushbacks is more illegal than ‘illegal’ immigration itself.
The other PN MEP Roberta Metsola, according to Labour, has attacked the Finance Minister after the meeting of the EP economic committee. Actually, she just uploaded a video of him and left him to do the rest of the work.
So should we suppose that “Malta first and foremost” requires that we ignore those terribly distorted statements he made in Brussels? PBS seems to think that way, because they certainly shared Labour’s definition of national interest and censored the Finance Minister.
As for the next grave sin by PN MEPs, Labour tells us they lobbied to have the passport scheme discussed in the European Parliament. All we can say is that thankfully they succeeded, in the national interest.
We shall be hearing more of this ridiculous common front talk and national interest as the EP debate approaches.
Clearly Labour has a problem with understanding the proper functioning of democracy, with handling dissent and free speech, with handling the international media, with defending its own programme, and certainly a problem with living up to the Prime Minister’s claim that the country, under his leadership, has finally dumped its inferiority complex.
What inferiority complex must his MEPs labour under if they cannot face the European Parliament without the two PN members at their side? Is Carachi’s proverbial dirty linen too hot to handle, or just too dirty?