Ironic

The Malta Independent   

   

 

How ironic!    The most forceful argument in favour of the EU membership project is government’s own incompetence.

 

With increasing regularity I meet people who are forming an opinion in favour of membership not because they like what is being negotiated.  Indeed they hardly know or care to inform themselves.   They are starting to favour EU membership as they fear it is the only way to save us from our own incompetence and indiscipline.

 

They are realising that 15 years of irresponsible money no problem culture has landed us with mountains of debt and debris which are becoming unmanageable and are threatening our sustainability as a truly independent state.

“They are starting to favour EU membership as they fear it is the only way to save us from our own incompetence and indiscipline.”

 

It is a typical case that fighting the invisible enemy from within is tougher than fighting the evident enemy from without.    We have fought wars and remained unconquered in the face of all adversity.     Yet the invisible enemy in the form of money no problem culture, the concept that all problems can be addressed by spending ourselves through them, the strange believe that heaven will take care of our future and we need not work hard for it,   all this has eroded our financial structures, our social solidarity and our determination to protect our young nationhood.

 

The two years of Labour interlude between 1996 – 1998 serve, if anything, to strengthen this readiness to give up on our own ability to face the future as a stand alone state.   The interlude served to expose how a serious government could not survive the strength of adversity heaped on it for taking real measures to modernise us out of our own insularity and to start thinking that sustainability can only be guaranteed through hard work and economic efficiency.   Consequently they doubt whether a re-elected Labour government, with the adversity of having the electoral boundaries shaped to cut its parliamentary majority disproportionately slim even in case of a handsome overall victory, will have strength and will-power in the high dose demanded by the tough task ahead.

 

This is the irony that Labour has to contend with.  The irony that government is using its own weakness to give strength to the quick accession to EU membership project to which Labour is opposed.

 

“It is time that we start believing in our own abilities to manage our own affairs as  the best platform to guarantee peace and prosperity as we have enjoyed these last 40 years - debt and debris mountains apart.”

 

And for this government is receiving the support of all those nations who are eager to see Malta melt its hard earned sovereignty at the EU alter.   Take the recent development from the Seville summit where Ireland was re-assured that its military neutrality will remain intact and that it will not be forced to join a common defence policy.

 

This was immediately hailed by the Prime Minister to emphasise that our own neutrality was, by simple extrapolation, similarly assured.   But this is not so.  Our neutrality comes in three dimensions -   foreign policy, security policy and defence policy.

 

Ireland was only spared the last dimension but is being forced, as other existing and candidate members to adopt the first two dimensions.   Within the foreign and security policy arrangement from which Malta will not be spared we could well be forced to accept a military base for security reasons even though we might have a veto on the use of the base for common defence purposes.

 

It is time that we start believing in our own abilities to manage our own affairs as  the best platform to guarantee peace and prosperity as we have enjoyed these last 40 years - debt and debris mountains apart.