Partnership - The Best Option

The Employer



Whenever this country made big irreversible decisions we always found the courage and wisdom to wait until we could do so as one nation.

When Mintoff wanted the integration with Britain in the 50`s but could not find the support of the Nationalist opposition the project was aborted.` When we gained independence in 1964 both main parties well fully supporting the independence concept. The difference was in the degree of independence desired. While the PN under Borg Olivier accepted independence packaged with a defense agreement which effectively took back with the left hand most of what independence had obtained with the right hand, Mintoff wanted a stand-alone independence. He wanted to negotiate the defense agreement separately and as an independent sovereign state as eventually he did in 1971.

When the country was moved from a monarchy to a republic this was done with a large majority ( 49 out of 55 ) of the House of Representatives. When the military base was dismantled in 1979 there was no opposition to it.` When the constitution was changed again in 1987 to entrench the neutrality provisions this was done with near unanimous vote of the House of Representatives.

It is just inconceivable that the country is being forced to take an irreversible decision to join the EU in membership, effectively prejudicing much of what independence, the republican constitution` and the` dismantling of the military base have delivered, when the country is so much split on the matter.

It does not matter so much whether Partnership is better than Membership or vice-versa. What matters is that irreversible decisions must be taken as one nation and our politicians must wait till a consensus matures.

Unfortunately the government has lost this simple logic. Personal agendas are dictating calendars which could split the country into irreconcilable divisions. The fact that many obligations being undertaken through membership would conflict with entrenched matters of our constitution, is being perilously ignored risking that the whole project would have to be aborted at the last minute down the line through legal interpretations which are currently being avoided or through people taking to the streets to defend their constitutional rights.

This is simply not the way to do things. EU membership in 2004 is not the last train to heaven. The way to do things is to allow free debate on the matter and wait,` wait as long as it takes,` until the country could find the inner strengths to take a broad-based decision.

It`s no use pretending that the Opposition does not exist. It exists and has a right to its views especially as its views do not present the dose of irreversibility that EU membership presents. And I can assure one and all that the Opposition`s conviction that Partnership is the best option is built on deep conviction, certainly not on convenience.

The country desperately needs a change in government. This government is tired, fatigued shorn of creative ideas and no longer offering any solutions to the domestic problems which they themselves fabricated over the last sixteen years. Democracy needs direly a change of government.

The core message of the PN is that we need the EU as a solution to all our problems.` Having lost the ability to manage the country, and just unwilling to abide by the rules of democracy (as was proven in 1998) to let other co-citizens lead until they get cleansed and re-charged through a due period in opposition, the PN are ready to sell our soul to the EU in an irreversible manner.

The message of the MLP is that solutions to our problems depend on our inner strengths not on the type of relationship we have with the EU. The state of the economies of the regions southern of the imaginary wall between Rome and Ancona bear witness to this. They are founders members of the EU predecessor organizations since inception in 1958. Yet because they missed the inner strength to get their economies going,` they remained in a state of backwardness with a widening gap from their brothers in the north.

Rather than force on the country unnecessary division, what we really need is new ideas and energy to get the country moving again. We need a new Labour government to address our economic malaise, the investment fatigue, the environmental degradation which a fossilized administration cannot even admit let alone sort out.

We need to get this country back on its feet.` And we can do it much better through Partnership. Partnership allows us the flexibility to differentiate ourselves.` Partnership allows us the possibility to leverage our strategic geo importance for our economic benefit.` Partnership allows us to appeal better to FDI by offering differential incentives which overcome the disadvantage of distance from the main EU markets.` It permits flexibility in fiscal policy on the tourism product and enhances the advantage of differentiation through duty free privileges. Partnership permits development of an international financial centre based on Private Banking as business gets scared from EU insistence of tax harmonization and full disclosure regulations.

Partnership works. And it does not exclude that if things develop enough inside the EU to permit us more flexibility as members, if the mad rush to a federal state of Europe ever gets revised to permit diversity and flexibility, we can as one nation in due time take a decision which keeps us united and protects our sovereignty.

But in the meantime this mad rush must stop. In the book I published in 1999, I had warned that with government neglecting the re-structuring process and misrepresenting what EU membership is all about, the support for EU membership will dwindle as we get nearer to making the choice. And I also hastened to add that it could do so for the wrong reasons. Now that reality has caught up with PN strategists and their acolytes, they are abandoning all logical arguments and clutching on the sentimentalism as embodied by the slogan "a choice for our children". Their message is subtle but clear. It is hard, it is tough, it puts most of us under severe strain and we have to make great personal sacrifices but all this is justified for the intangible and obscure notion that it is for the good of our children. Reality is different. The good of our children demands that we focus all our resources on getting the domestic front in order, from the economy to the environment, from the labour market to sustainability of our social security system. No EU is going to do this for us. We have to do it through internal leadership unless we want to put in jeopardy our nationhood and independence by asking foreign organizations to save us from ourselves. In the meantime just as we wish our children to go to heaven but only after they have a fulsome life on this earth, the EU, like heaven, can wait!