Simplifying the Issues

Di-ve

With just over two weeks left before we decide on the EU referendum, possibly locking Malta’s future into an irreversible membership, experience shows that a sizeable part of the electorate are just not understanding the issues involved. Many are still confused and cannot understand what exactly they are being asked to decide about.

Admittedly the EU is a complicated issue. Thirty-three chapters, four pillars, innumerable treaties, protocols, unilateral declarations, conventions and constitutions, is just too much for the average citizens to digest and absorb. If the accession treaty is published, reading it with a fair chance of understanding the concepts involved, would probably take much more than the two odd weeks left between now and the referendum.

So some simplification could well come in handy. And as often happens, even the most complicated things could in substance by condensed to quite a simple and understandable choice.

“their vantage point is that after sixteen years of nearly uninterrupted stay in power where they made themselves quite comfortable and unarguably extremely arrogant, they see a desert which they are afraid to cross on their own”

Whilst remaining a very complicated subject in its details, a matter with many many facets, permitting different sectors to look at the very same thing and reaching diametrically opposite conclusions, the EU issue could ultimately be boiled down to a simple choice.

The government and the ‘yes’ movement think that the EU is a solution to all our problems; that this is an opportunity which will be fatal to miss; that EU membership opens limitless possibilities that cannot be accessed in any other way; that in reality there is no choice and no matter how hard it is to travel it, membership is the only road ahead; that all other countries who can do it are preparing to travel along that road and that we should not choose to stay out in the cold.

I never assume that those who argue like that are doing it out of stupidity or out of some devious wish to subject this country to eternal damnation. I simply ask what is their vantage point for seeing things the way they are seeing them.

And their vantage point is that after sixteen years of nearly uninterrupted stay in power where they made themselves quite comfortable and unarguably extremely arrogant, they see a desert which they are afraid to cross on their own. Being unable to offer any solutions for safe crossing of the desert, they see the EU as the only available company to offer comfort and support without bothering to ask what will happen to them once they get to the other side near the water and the vegetation. Would the carrier expect eternal gratitude and control of our activities for helping us through?

“ But Labour exudes confidence that with new determination and vigour in leadership, we can get through the desert without selling our soul to the carrier. ”

The partnership argument does not question that a tough barren desert is ahead. But Labour exudes confidence that with new determination and vigour in leadership, we can get through the desert without selling our soul to the carrier.

Labour realises that carrier or no carrier the strength for crossing the desert has to come from inside us and that this will not be missing as in the past we have crossed many more arduous deserts when properly led and motivated. So according to Labour what is missing is the internal strength of leadership and fortitude which in fact brought us to the desert in the first place.

So once it is readily admitted by one and all that the EU is no panacea for our economic home-made problems, that we still need to find the internal strength to re-structure to cut the waste and make optimum use of the scarce resources available to us, why do the ‘yes’ lobby assume that the same team which lead us to the desert can get us out of it safely by simply hooking on to a carrier?

Once we still need internal strength and determination to make our way out of the desert even with the carrier holding our hands, can we just not work our way out of it to ensure that once we can get to the other side near the water and the vegetation we can still do business with the carrier as partners not as a subsumed little brotherly elf who will just have to do whatever is demanded of him?

Clearly the same situation is being seen from two very different vantage points without much disagreement on the factual present reality.

So your simply saying ‘yes’ or opting for one of the three choices in Labour’s package boils down to how much you believe in our inner strength and ability to sort out the economic fracas of the last three administrations. I do. The ‘yes’ camp don’t. That’s what the EU issue ultimately boils down to.