Tal-iljunfant fuq ta' quddiem
In presenting its candidates for the European Parliament elections, the Labour Party chose – with its usual lack of political nous – to remind us that a vote for Labour is a vote for Anglu Farrugia, Toni Abela, and that man with the eloquent eyebrows who embarrassed the country as foreign minister during the short-lived legislature of 1996-1998.
Tal-iljunfant, ta’ Otello, ta’ Made in Brussel u ta’ Allahares-nidhlu-fl-Ewropa fuq ta’ quddiem, u l-kandidati maghfusin fuq wara. Great strategy, guys – at least you had the good sense to lock Jason in the lavatory before the press call.
The important people on this occasion were the candidates, but you wouldn’t know it with that line-up of Old Labour creatures blocking the view.
George ‘Allahares nidhlu fl-Ewropa’ Vella must have been sitting there with his gall rising. God, how it must have hurt to pronounce the words ‘European Union’.
And what in heaven’s name is Muscat trying to tell us by shoving Allahares-nidhlu-fl-Ewropa onto the top table – that he’s going to be Minister for European Affairs in four years’ time?
Christ on a bike. They never learn.
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Reply to eros Click here to cancel reply
Trying to follow Maltese politics as best as I can, but I’m getting the sense the Labour Party oppose the EU. Is this so? Do they even find, presuming they are at least a left-leaning party, their own ideologies to difficult to understand?
[Daphne – The Labour Party vehemently opposed EU membership and turned the issue into a years-long battle. When it was elected to government in 1996, its first act was to ‘freeze’ Malta’s application for EU membership, which was tantamount to withdrawing it because you can’t tell the EU to put your application on hold just in case you change your mind at some distant point in the future. For years, we heard nothing from the Labour Party but virulent anti-EU rhetoric. The party even broadcast specially-produced anti-EU programmes on its television channel. They were researched, produced and presented by Joseph Muscat, then a party propagandist and now party leader. When Malta voted Yes in a referendum on EU membership in 2003, the Labour Party dismissed the result and said it would be ignoring it. To this day, the Labour Party has not acknowledged that Malta voted to join the European Union in that referendum. For the next five years, party leader Alfred Sant continued to say that EU membership was bad for Malta, even though Malta was now a member. He railed against Malta joining the Eurozone, against VAT and against EU legislation right up until the general election last year, when the pro-EU Nationalist Party was returned to government and he was ousted from the party leadership after his fourth consecutive electoral defeat. Sant continues to write newspaper articles criticising EU membership. His successor, Joseph Muscat, has been forced by circumstance to promote the message that his party ‘is not against EU membership’ which is not at all the same thing as saying that Labour is in favour of membership. Meanwhile, his party activists, candidates, MPs and electors are left spinning. After years of having it drummed into them that the EU is a grisly ogre and that they should be against membership for Malta, they are now being obliged to adopt an ‘EU-neutral’ stance, but of course, they don’t feel it. They remain anti-EU. Meanwhile, I’m posting this link to your blog http://marcantonysjournal.blogspot.com/ for the benefit of others here, and you might be interested in reading this, which gives some background http://www.nytimes.com:80/2003/03/10/world/malta-voters-narrowly-approve-joining-european-union.html ]
Thank you for the update. Really appreciate all that. It would seem that the Labour Party is too obsessed with feeding a few power hungry individuals who dominate the party, rather than addressing any issues and tackling any agenda. So much for the left and its power-to-the-people. They are elitists who just don’t cut it to be elite. Irony?
power-to-the-people – isn’t accepting, following and implementing the people’s choice (in 2003’s referendum and election) what labour seem to be doing ?
isn’t that giving “power-to-the-people” by offering their candidates to represent those who vote them in eu ??
[Daphne – The referendum on Europe was in March 2003. Labour should have accepted the result then. The current Labour leader hasn’t even accepted it now.]
and what proves your theory ? (that jm didnt accept it)
[Daphne – Nobody’s saying that Muscat doesn’t accept EU membership. He would have a very odd sort of psychological problem if he didn’t – like Sant. But for the umpteenth time, there is the world of difference between accepting something and wanting it. For example, I have no doubt that Kurt Farrugia accepts the fact that he looks like a sample-size toby-jug, while what he really wants is to be Daniel Craig. I apologise for being so graphic, but you leave me with no choice.]
so in your first post you actually meant
“The current Labour leader hasn’t even wanted it now.”
???
[Daphne – I don’t know what that sentence means, and I don’t know why you find it so hard to understand what I mean. It’s not like I beat around the bush.]
And as a reputable newspaper, the NYT quotes the year of Independence (a reference year for all countries of the world) in its brief history of Malta. This is the absolute norm, but only in Malta do some people think otherwise.
They’ve lost the plot and they haven’t even started.
@Marc Antony
You seem to be forming your opinion on the Labour Party by getting it through what the Nationalists think and write. Just to complete the picture a bit, may I tell you that in 1987 the Nationalists were elected to government promising “national reconciliation” after a decade in which politics in Malta had become dangerous business. In 1992, a new Labour leader, Alfred Sant, helped the Nationalists in this and managed to purge his party of violent elements. The “national reconciliation”-preaching Nationalists, realising that such a move made the Labour Party electable, launched a character assassination of Sant unparalleled in Malta’s history.
[Daphne – You know, Albert, character assassination works only when it strikes a chord with the electorate as being the truth. That’s why the ‘character assassination’ of Alfred Sant worked and the ‘character assassination’ of Eddie Fenech Adami did not.]
Sant and the Labour Party had declared that the EU question would be decided by general election, since EU membership is a policy of government, and governments are decided by elections. Labour campaigned against membership, but declared that it would respect the people’s choice as expressed in the general election. Labour lost the election in 2003 and declared that EU membership is a reality and the issue is now closed.
[Daphne – Which is not the same as saying that it is in favour of EU membership, but means that it had no choice but to accept reality, a reality it would have preferred not to exist. One accepts the death of a loved one, for example, but one wishes with all one’s heart that one could undo it.]
The “national reconciliation”-preaching Nationalists, since then, instead of encouraging Labour in its new position so that there be unity on this issue, has been incessantly trying to keep the issue open by propagating the lie that Labour would take Malta out of the EU if elected.
[Daphne – Lie? With George ‘Allahares nidhlu fl-Ewropa’ as spokesman on EU Affairs and hanging about waiting to become Minister of EU Affairs? If Labour doesn’t take Malta out of the EU, it is only because of the financial cost to the country, and not because it doesn’t believe that Malta should be out of the EU. Only people who are completely nuts or as shallow as a puddle change their minds overnight about a matter as serious as this. So you’re nuts, shallow or you don’t really mean it.]
Listening to Nationalist apologists now would make you think that we still need to decide about membership.
[Daphne – No, what’s being said is that you decided long ago: against membership.]
Also note that while the Nationalists claim the “European spirit” to be their own (for example any Nationalist activity would include the waving of the EU blue flag), in reality they have no idea what the EU is about.
[Daphne – Yes, right, because they weren’t the ones who negotiated Malta’s entry into the European Union and the eurozone in the first place. They just sat in the back row, throwing bottles.]
Apart from countless directives which the Maltese government has tried to ignore until being rapped by the European Commission, it now is trying to strike out of the electoral register around 1,000 non-Maltese EU citizens, by having different rules for their registration and for that of Maltese citizens in flagrant breach of the letter and the spirit of EU law.
Sorry for the length of this, but I suppose you merit a fuller picture.
I’m sorry Albert, but I still have to entirely agree with Daphne here. The main body of argument here circulates around the EU.
As Daphne said, just because the LP may not revoke the membership doesn’t mean they don’t disagree with it. I hardly would want any nation to be led by a party that is too stubborn and narrow-minded to accept the majority of the nation’s will as being even remotely right.
But, I want to add to your point that the LP accepted the people’s will from the election result. Well, they should have accepted that will earlier when they held the referendum and the people voted for EU membership. They were in power when the people said “give us EU membership” and so they should have been the party that gave Malta EU membership. Instead, it had to be delayed until the Nats. got in.
[Daphne – Actually, Labour was not in government when the referendum was held. A Labour government would never have held a referendum on EU membership, because it had decided on the people’s behalf that Malta’s place was not in Europe.]
All I can comment about that picture is that I see a valid group of candidates, a far much better group than the PN’s.
[Daphne – It’s a free country, Alan, no thanks to Labour. So vote for whom you please. You’re free to believe that the best people to represent your interests in the European Parliament are people who voted No in the referendum and who tried to prevent you from becoming an EU citizen. They might be nice enough people to chat to, but I’ll never forget that if it were up to them, my sons would have been trapped on this rock without an EU passport and without access to educational or work opportunities elsewhere, for the rest of their lives, unless they became illegal immigrants.]
I can assure you dear Daphne, that George Vella’s knowledge about the EU is incredible.
[Daphne – “Allahares nidhlu fl-Ewropa!” Come on. And for that matter, so is Sharon’s. The difference is in the interpretation. They don’t like what they see and think that Malta is better off out. The majority disagree – still.]
Labour was never against EU and the argument was that we were not prepared to join for the moment, were we?
[Daphne – I think I follow these matters a little more closely than you do. Alfred Sant is on record as saying that he has been against EEC/EC/EU membership since the 1960s. If he didn’t change his mind in 40 years, he wasn’t ever going to change it.]
Labour was much more realistic than the PN, which pictured the EU as the ultimate salvation for this country and we’ll die of hunger and loneliness if we don’t join!
[Daphne – Well, let’s put it this way if you’re a doubting Thomas. Even the pound sterling didn’t survive the credit crunch. So what hope was there for the Maltese lira?]
A recent opinion poll shows that the Maltese are disappointed with the results achieved.
[Daphne – No doubt, because one always expects more.]
I blame the PN for all this caused he created this high expectation of the you that the people are disillusioned. The PN pictured EU as a do or die for us! Labour suffered for being much more realistic than the PN, with the help of many spinners including yourself!
[Daphne – I am very proud of having formed part of the campaign to bring out the Yes vote. I did it not for myself, as it was already too late for me, but for all those of my sons’ generation, because I didn’t want them to endure the same restrictions and lack of opportunity that those of my generation had to put up with.]
Fortunately the truth somehow or another always prevail.
[Daphne – Damn right it does.]
Now that we are in the EU, Labour is working to get the most out of it. I strongly believe the Labour are by far better than the PN to do so.
[Daphne – Yes, no doubt that’s what they believe, with their ‘ejjew ha nerdghu minn fuq il-barrani’ mentality. That really goes down well in a more sophisticated environment.]
Oh well. Didn’t the PN once act as Mussolini’s agent in Malta? Times change, and so do people, and organisations.
[Daphne – People don’t change. Organisations do change, but only when there’s been a complete overall of the people within them. Change doesn’t mean being passionately against EU membership for years and then changing your message 24 hours after a general election result, for the sake of survival. That’s opportunism, which is why nobody believes you. Are you telling me that the 100,000+ people who voted against EU membership in 2003 are now suddenly delighted to be EU citizens? If so, then I am delighted myself, but I doubt it.]
The fact that the NYT mentions Independence Day as a reference year does not imply that Independence Day is more significant than, say, Freedom Day.
From certain perspectives, a person becomes independent at age 18. However, if this person still depends on his parents for food, shelter and financial support, he cannot really be described as independent.
Regarding the EU, the fact that both major political parties are now speaking in favour of EU membership does not mean that EU membership is the best option for Malta.
It may be that it is the best option given the kind of political ‘leaders’ that we have. However, given real statesmen, with real visions, there could be better alternatives.
One could argue that such alternatives do not exist, and in a certain sense, he would be right. Such alternatives are not straightforward, and are not available in catalogues. They have to be designed.
Independence represents the birth of a nation, ie.the day when a country officially starts to exist as a nation. Malta joined the UN and other supranational institutions in 1964 when it became a nation for the first time ever.
If you want to go to the extreme and compare this with a human being (even if completely unrelated), it’s at birth that you come into existence. At 18, you become mature enough (or supposedly so) to take your own decisions, and hence you obtain the right to vote, drive etc.
“Independence represents the birth of a nation ….. etc.”
There is a difference between nation and state. In 1964 we became an independent state. We were a nation long before that.
Daphne – yes, you really read the situation well…’Old Labour creatures blocking the view’….I really like that quote…they just don’t get it….every time such ‘Old Labour creatures’ appear they increase Labour’s chances of remaining in opposition….George Vella, the man Joe Muscat gets his advice from, as foreign affairs shadow minister…they must be kidding. No wonder George Vella was dead set against the good George, being George Abela, and in favour of Joseph Muscat for Labour’s leadership. Most probably George Abela would have made George Vella shadow minister for political Neanderthals.
Daphne, that was a brilliant synopsis of the PL’s past and present motions vis-a-vis the EU. What I cannot understand is how the party which is historically anti-EU gets the most support from the Maltese electorate. It’s enough to look at their candidates (if you manage to see them behind the four wannabes) and try and find one who has the courage and honesty to declare that he always was in favour of Malta joining the EU and that they voted against the Sant directive. To say that you are ‘not against the EU’ is tantamount to saying that you are not against paying tax, but do your damnedest to avoid paying it. We should make sure that our representatives in the European Parliament are those who are truly convinced about Malta’s place in the European Union, and not those who believe it is now convenient to change their minds.
Re: character assassination
The Labour Party doesn’t even have half the PN’s media resources to initiate a similar character assassination exercise.
[Daphne – The Labour Party has exactly the same resources the Nationalist Party has: a television station, a radio station, a website, a news portal, a newspaper, a leader, a good dozen apparatchiks and plenty of candidates and MPs.]
Re: EU membership
“A reality it would have preferred not to exist” – are you some kind of psychologist or whatever they’re called? You’re able to read the minds of George Vella and Co?
[Daphne – Psychologists don’t read minds. Is this the new Newspeak message from Labour – that the party was always in favour of membership but, like a reluctant bridegroom, couldn’t set the date? I worked on the Yes campaign with very many others from all walks of life, and I missed little or nothing. I distinctly remember George Vella shouting ‘Allahares nidhlu fl-Ewropa.’ The only thing that would have made him change his mind is early-onset senile dementia.]
If a party takes a stand on an issue (in this case against full membership) and it is NOT accepted by the electorate the only democratic way out is to accept the people’s verdict. It is pretty useless living in the past.
[Daphne – God, you people are so damned exhausting. Accepting something is not the same thing as wanting it. Remember that the next time you want something badly and don’t get it.]
Re: overnight
5 years have passed since our EU membership.
[Daphne – That long, eh? But apparently it took your people 24 hours to change their minds from NO (with exclamation marks) to ‘Oh well, if we have to say we’re don’t mind being in the EU, we will, just so long as we can get into government.’]
Re: the EU flag
90% of those waving the EU flag was because it had the colour blue (like the PN blue), for sure they had no clue of what the EU was all about.
[Daphne – That’s right. All the stupid people vote Nationalist. That’s why I’m right there among them.]
@ David Ellul ‘the only democratic way out is to accept the people’s verdict’
It’s not at all useless living in the past. Remember 1981? Remember the referendum the MLP ‘won’ according to Dr Sant? How can we ever be sure the PL believe in democracy?
“90% of those waving the EU flag was because it had the colour blue (like the PN blue), for sure they had no clue of what the EU was all about”
So says a person who thought the Sicilians were going to flock to Malta to take our jobs after joining.
“The Labour Party doesn’t even have half the PN’s media resources to initiate a similar character assassination exercise.”
You just like lying. The PL has so many resources that it even resorted to replaying a clip of a student a billion times to try and shame Daphne and the students for not liking Fred Flintstone.
Now go on Youtube and watch that clip, you need to be told to fuck off.
Oh look – Serfs’ Emancipation Day is on March 28th, only three days away from Jum il-Helsien! http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/jamesreynolds/2009/03/here_in_beijing_unless_you.html#more
Ok, what does “Allahares nidhlu fl-Ewropa” mean?
[Daphne – God forbid we should join the European Union. And he yelled it from a public platform. That’s George Vella I’m talking about, the man who is now Joseph Muscat’s spokesman on EU Affairs.]
“Fortunately the truth somehow or another always prevail.
[Daphne – Damn right it does.]”
“A lie can travel around the world while the truth is getting its boots on”
@ Alan
“Now that we are in the EU (viva San Filep la x-xitan irid hekk…sort of) Labour is working to get the most out of it.”
How dear Alan? Just tell us how! Five years ago, Labour elected three out of five MEPs….Five years ago, Alan. Tell us how brilliant they were in these last five years. Going on cruises whilst there was an important vote going on in the European Parliament. Oh, but maybe now Labour will change it’s strategy. They will veto and block the parliament wheels if it doesn’t go their way. Childish! But how can anyone in this world give his best contribution to something he does not believe in. Yes Alan, Labour does not believe in Europe. Labour never did and never will. That’s the reality of it all.
What a mentality! Will it ever go away? We should endeavour to live decently and not “to get the most out of it”. And of course armed with this attitude, Labour “”are far better” to lead. Mhux hekk nibqghu.
BREAKING NEWS…Re: Dublin 2
…One either breaks into tears…or into laughter…or opt out
You decide.
See how the boys from Mile end…ended miles apart.
http://www.maltarightnow.com/?module=news&at=Il%2DPE+japprova+u+jaddotta+l%2Dburden+sharing+b%26%23295%3Bala+mekkanizmu+obbligatorju+biex+jid%26%23295%3Bol+sal%2D2011&t=a&aid=99812086&cid=50
@ Albert Farrugia et al. I will say this in pidgin english, so that I can be clearly understood ..” The pig, when you cut off its tail, remains the pig”. A leopard doesn’t change its spots at all.
If Gorg of the beetling eyebrows, l-ispettur, Otello and the gingerbread man were against us joining the EU, they did this because it was politically expedient to do so at the time, and because they wanted to use it as an excuse to go up the Castille stairs. No other reason. They would have been against us joining COMECON if that’s what the referendum was about in 2003, as long as it gave them the tiniest hope that the Nasty Nats would stumble and fall and go away.
The MLP candidates for the EP elections are not there as an end in itself, that is, to be elected MEPs for the greater glory of Malta. They are part of a greater plan to get the MLP elected to government, “ghax issa ahna jmissna”.
Unfortunately, people who will support the MLP do so not because they believe that the MLP is actually better, but because they believe in the good old days when jobs, plots and TVs were handed out by some benevolent father-figure in Castille. Businesses which want this also want some form of protectionism, or a blind eye to do what they want at the expense of the competition, as long as they support the MLP. Then there are the hunters, not all hunters, mind, itching to be able to blast everything from a falcom to a bee out of the sky for the fun of it.
Those four clowns in the MLP should have stepped up to the national podium with the PM in this difficult time with the Italians and hand on heart declared their love for their country above their shallow politics of convenience.
Instead, they and the vast numbers of people who support them are hell bent on playing the field like some hormone-fuelled teenagers in a nightclub, flitting from one girl to another. Ghax issa huma jmisshom.
I sometimes despair of this country. Reading a missive from you, Mr Farrugia, and you, Alan the Surnameless, I despair even more. Bidu Gdid indeed. It’s increasingly looking like the MLP is a muddled throwback crossed with the most incredible opportunism ever. Shallowness has become its norm. There is no depth. Nothing. Zero.
On BBC news an Icelandic writer (whose name now escapes me) said the following:
“We were fools to jeopardise our future and now we are joining the EU like a wounded patient and the hospital we are going to is Europe.”
So if we had taken Joseph’s brilliant advice not to join the EU and model our destiny like that of Iceland (he was so fond of this idea then) we would now be like a wounded patient eager to go to hospital Europe. Thanks to the PN we have joined the EU in our best of health and we are now getting stronger every year.
Iceland brought it on themselves, by being as deregulated as possible (i.e. opp of socialism). The euro would have helped, but I doubt it could have saved their financial system. It was false prosperity that ruined Iceland.
Get a load of Labour’s spokesman on EU Affairs. Soooooo sophisticated.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsGpkeYvBPY
You think your son well behaved on that occasion???
[Daphne – Yes.]
Can somebody answer this question? If Labour is a left-leaning party why have they got those arrows pointing to the right with the word SUĊĊESS.
Because that’s the “fast forward” arrow.
You’re kidding! And I thought they were giving Gonzi a free-kick.