Their ruddy cheek makes me vote
Here they are: two of the greatest beneficiaries of EU membership
The latest survey results tell us that 40 per cent of electors are not interested in who gets a seat in the European Parliament. I must say that until a few weeks ago I was among them, but as the day draws closer I’m changing my mind.
I know that it’s been a given for the last few months that Labour is going to get three of the five seats and another one on top of those if Malta gets its sixth. This is going to be an even worse showing for the Nationalist Party than it was in 2004, because in that election many thousands of people who had voted for the Nationalist Party in the previous year’s general election voted for Arnold Cassola of AD and they’re not going to do the same this time, whatever he might think.
Instead, they’re staying home and leaving the decision to the rest of us.
It’s a decision I don’t mind making at all. Despite knowing the outcome well ahead of time, I’m going to savour every minute of yet another opportunity to vote against those who fought like hell to prevent Malta from entering the European Union.
When I think how hard they worked to achieve that reprehensible end, and what the consequences would have been for the country, and especially for my children’s generation and for generations to come, I break out in a cold sweat. I think I must be suffering still from the post-traumatic stress brought on by those few hours of waiting while the referendum votes were counted.
So yes, I am going to enjoy voting not so much for the Nationalist candidates as against every single one of the Labour names, because what they did then was unforgivable. They treated our future like a joke, like a game that could be turned around and the results of which didn’t really matter.
They took it all so lightly that they were among the first to scramble aboard the EU gravy-train, some of them not even having to switch principles to do so because they didn’t have any to start with. It was all the same to them and it still is.
The insults to our intelligence keep coming thick and fast. There goes Marlene Mizzi in The Times, telling us in a hostile tone that we have no right to ask her how she voted, but for our information and if we’d like to know, so there, she voted Yes in the referendum and then Yes to rabidly anti-EU Sant in the general election a few weeks later.
And don’t you tell her that was a potty thing to do because she’ll jump right down your throat.
There goes John Attard Montalto with his I’m-all-right-Jack attitude, taking cruises and popping in to the European Parliament occasionally to press the wrong button or the right flesh.
There goes Glenn Bedingfield, hot out of Super One where he spent year after year relaying incessant messages about the dangers of EU membership. Now he’s been magic-carpeted into the European Parliament and doesn’t seem to have a clue what to do or how he got there, though he’s so damned glad that his boss’s Partnership plans didn’t work out that he’s gagging for another stint in Brussels and is nagging at us like hell to vote for him.
If I could vote with some cartons of rotten eggs, I would do so.
And what to say of Joseph Muscat, who’s not standing for the EP election because now he’s got what he wanted and has one thing left to go – prime minister and running the country? One minute he was researching and presenting a Super One show called Made in Brussels, telling us all about the dangers of invasion by Sicilian hairdressers and hawkers from Catania, and the next he was blinking in disbelief in the European Parliament.
Plan A (Partnership) goes down the drain and quick, quick, it’s on to Plan B (EU Membership: Let’s Grab What We Can for Ourselves).
The great, perverse and twisted irony is that Muscat owes everything he is today (perhaps that should be ‘everything he isn’t’) to the heroic efforts of all those who toiled like dray-horses to get Malta into the European Union. How so, you might ask?
European Union membership allowed him to raise his profile by becoming a member of the European Parliament, and this in turn gave him something with which to impress the Labour Party delegates when it came to choosing their new leader. But even the leadership vacuum arose out of EU membership: had Sant been successful, he would not have had to resign.
With Sant’s Partnership – not that there could have been such a thing – Joseph Muscat would have been just another party functionary presenting Super One shows by night and trying to make a living in some back-office by day.
So there it is. Joseph Muscat worked like the devil to ruin our future, while those he was fighting against were beavering away creating the conditions that would allow him to become prime minister within the space of a decade.
And all while watching him on television, heckling and insulting prime minister Fenech Adami and telling him – as Mary Spiteri so memorably did, may we forgive her for doing so – that he and his government would sink like the Titanic. Oh, famous last words.
A stew of mixed messages about Europe is coming out of the Labour Party and its many spokespersons now. Muscat owes his current position to EU membership, and so he is opportunistically grateful – though it doesn’t mean that he has grasped the full significance of how close he and his party bosses came to pushing Malta over the brink into disaster and catastrophe.
Yet he has made George ‘Allahares nidhlu fl-Ewropa’ Vella spokesman for EU Affairs, and he didn’t do it to be humorous. He did it because he just doesn’t understand. Vella continues to bristle with anger about the reality of EU membership. He just can’t come to terms with it, let alone embrace it.
And then there are the Labour Party’s 140,000+ electors, who were brainwashed for years about the evils of the European Union, and who cannot be made to change their minds now, because that process would involve the party leaders saying the magic but extremely embarrassing words: “We were wrong. What we told you was hogwash, but even we believed it at the time, if that’s any consolation.”
And then there’s Edward Scicluna, a nice man and pleasant to speak to and work with, but for heaven’s sake. Where was he in 2003? Voting No in the referendum? Voting for Sant in the general election that followed? Or trying to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds and falling flat on his face like Mrs Mizzi?
I find all these people just unbelievable: the sheer nerve, the utter gall, are too much. Marlene Mizzi and Edward Scicluna, fully aware that electors in Swieqi, St Julian’s and Sliema might identify with them and choose to overlook the reality of their party, are doing a lot of targeting among the disillusioned, trying to wangle the votes that in the previous EP election went to AD.
Because they are not consistent themselves – well, Mrs Mizzi certainly is not, and by her own admission – they can’t understand that others might actually value consistency.
Had they done a bit of research – and Professor Scicluna, who does this sort of thing for Super One at every election must have done it for himself – they would have understood that practically all of those who voted for an AD candidate in the last EP election had voted Yes in the referendum the previous year, and then for the Nationalist Party or AD in the general election that followed.
The common factor? They were all pro-EU membership votes for pro-EU membership politicians by pro-EU membership electors.
AD was part of the Yes movement, and not part of No2EU like Sharon I-hate-the-EU-but-I’ll-make-my-money-there-anyway Ellul Bonici, and certainly not part of CNI or Partnership or Made in Brussels or Super ‘Allahares nidhlu fl-Ewropa’ One.
By campaigning around the ‘smart’ crowd, what these two are saying is: “We know you think of us as People Like You, unlike those NQLUs Joseph Cuschieri, Glenn Bedingfield and the rest of them. So why don’t you vote for us?”
Well, here’s their answer. It’s because just six short years ago you tried to keep this country out of Europe. You tried to deny me an EU passport.
You didn’t care if everyone else was locked within this microscopic territory because you were all right, Jack and Jill, and you didn’t give a damn about the rest, still less about the generations to come. And now you come asking me to stick you in the European Parliament so that you can have a good time and give one last gasp to your faltering careers, a salary that you don’t deserve, and a pension on top of that?
Here’s my answer: eff off.
I’d rather use my vote to scrape out the sludge at the bottom of the dishwasher than use it to vote for somebody who said No in the referendum and/or voted for Sant in 2003, when so much hung in the balance.
But that won’t give you the message I want to give you for your unforgivable behaviour and your abysmal sense of judgement, so instead I’m going out to vote for every last one of the Nationalist candidates – yes, even for Vince Farrugia, though he’s getting a 10.
Then, when Labour gets its three seats and maybe even its fourth, my conscience will be at peace that I played no part in rewarding those who tried so hard to ruin my sons’ future.
I can rest easy in the knowledge that I didn’t let pique get in the way of commonsense, refusing to vote so as to make some stupid point about water and electricity bills or a promotion, and so indirectly electing the specimens who tried to stab us all in the back with their fictitious Partnership.
I want to have no hand in giving that bunch of No2EU campaigners a leg up into the European Parliament. There are enough people who think with the seat of their pants who are going to do just that.
The folks in government may have sent you a couple of bills you don’t like, but they were also the ones who went through hell to get you that EU passport you’re tossing around. You have to be really nuts to consider spiting them by rewarding the ones who did their best to keep you locked on this non-EU rock with no prospects to speak of.
You’ve really got to have no pride at all to do something like that.
And I’m damned if I’m going to be one of them.
This article is published in The Malta Independent today.
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Wow! To the point. Great article!
Dear Daphne, the reasons listed in this article are the very reasons why I can never vote for the LP candidates – not only in the EP elections but also all the elections which will be contested by the “no-to-EU” brigade.
I can’t understand – I seriously can’t – how some people have the gall to appear on our television screens and tell us they’re running for the European Parliament. I feel insulted. That’s the word. After all the tension they made us go through in the run-up to that unforgettable referendum and the April 2003 election.
If I voted for them I would be betraying myself and all I have believed in since the day I learned about the EEC (some 22 years ago – incidentally because Eddie Fenech Adami had spoken about it during a meeting and I had asked my parents what it was all about). Learning about it at the age of 10, I was fascinated and mesmerised by the idea of having somebody in Malta who had actually thought about it and wanted us in the “club of nations designed to improve the lives of its citizens” (as my parents had very elegantly put it – I still remember the lesson of that day).
I can never vote for those people who fought tooth and claw to leave us out of the EU. Not even if I had to use my vote to clean my dishwasher (absolutely loved your comment).
And, frankly, for me that is one of the two reasons for which I’m voting, the other one being that I believe it is irresponsible not to vote given the circumstances of this extremely lucky country.
In her interview with a timesofmalta.com journalist today, Marlene Mizzi claims that had Labour won the 2003 election she is sure that it would have respected the people’s wish to join the EU. If it were not the case she would have been the first to protest against the Labour government.
Oh yes, and where was she protesting against Alfred Sant the day after the referendum, when he declared “il-partnerxip rebah”.
Iddahaqniex Marlene, go and sell nappies instead.
[Daphne – She actually voted for him AFTER he said that. Unbelievable.]
“Yes, even for Vince Farrugia, though he’s getting a 10.”
Now, that’s news.
[Daphne – That’s the power of seeing too much of those koccijiet zibel in the run-up to polling day.]
Mhux soltu tieghek Daphne li taghmel U turn….. I will vote for all the PN EP candidates except Vince Farrugia, Alex Perici Calascione and Roberta Metsola Tedesco Triccas. The three of them are opportunists and I don’t trust them.
For your eyes only Daphne……why did you not publish my second bit about Vince? I’m wondering…….
[Daphne – I deleted it along with another one. That sometimes happens when I’m in a rush (I pressed the wrong button….). You can send it in again.]
No problem
I wrote, how come you are voting for Vince when he was (like LP) anti EU before the referendum. Just read what he wrote:
Joholmu
Ghax hi holma, holma kbira nobis, dik li xi hadd qed jghid li l-Unjoni Ewropea ser tifthilna l-opportunitajiet ghal investiment u x-xoghol. Meta? Ghada? Is-sena d-diehla? Lil min? Lit-tarzna? Lill-bdiewa? Lil manifattura? Lill-kummercjanti? Lil-lukandi? Lil min? Fejnhom il-fatti? Fejnhom il-figuri? Jekk il-gvern jibqa jimla ras in-nies bil-holm nibqghu nezlin. Ninzlu dejjem iktar l-isfel, fin-nizla tar-rovina. Ghax mhux vera li l-ekonomija qed tissahhah. Mhux vera li nvestituri u mprendituri Maltin ghandhom opportunitajiet ahjar li ser isibuhom ghada. Mhux vera li l-finanzi tal-gvern qed jitrangaw. Mhux vera li qed jinstabu opportunitajiet godda ta’ xoghol produttiv. Mhux vera qed jizdiedu l-proffitti, li huma l-akbar garanzija ghal aktar investiment fil-futur.
http://grtu.net/data/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=346&Itemid=26
No way will I vote for this man. Qed jaghmel ezatt bhal tal-lejber! No madam.
[Daphne – When it came to the crunch he voted Yes and then PN in 2003 and that’s enough for me to give him a 10.]
Good commentary – it practically says it all. I am sure that the 40 cent will no longer be as many because I still have faith that the Maltese in their right minds will vote for the NP candidates and not for PL candidates who really do not care a hoot for the EU except for what they can gain from being an MEP.
Another article that really hits the nail on the head. I can’t believe that there are pro-EU people, who at the moment are still in the ‘no vote’ mode. Surely after what happened in the last EU election and the goings-on of the PL MEPs we do not have the luxury of not using our vote.
And as Daphne says in her article, the more the Labourite candidates open their mouth, the more they are exposing themselves for what they really are. Also their track record is abysmal to say the least.
Remember, as things stand now, the only guarantee to maximising the full potential of pro Malta achievement comes only from PN candidates. So, vote and vote for PN candidates. Future generations will thank you.
Another victory for the PL will only entrench the party in the belief that it is the one with the right ‘policies’ and attitudes.
Very good arrticle. I voted AD last time round. I will not make the same mistake twice. I will vote for those who secured our future.
My only comment to this well written contribution is that I disagree with your comment that all those who voted against membership wanted to ruin your son’s future.
I would like to think that with or without EU membership, those who persevere and want to succeed would do so anyway. Stating that the EU is the reason for anyone’s successful future or otherwise is a sweeping statement, not factual and therefore incorrect.
[Daphne – I see that you’re one of those with the hair-shirt mentality. Why make it easy when you can make it bloody difficult if not impossible for most? Yes, they would have ruined my sons’ future. Everything my sons are doing now or are about to do shortly would have been out of the question without their EU passport. And those things are opening up other opportunities already, opportunities which would have been impossible without steps 1 and 2. Your definition of success may be nilhaq avukat jew nilhaq tabib. In my family, it isn’t. If we hadn’t joined the EU, they’d have left university and then – what? Paceville every evening and a dull job every day? Same scene, same people until they wake up and their lives are half over? Or try to smuggle themselves out of the country somehow, with or without a work permit? Get real.]
To firmly believe that success depends solely on EU membership may reflect an inferiority complex, to a certain degree. The EU has given us better opportunities, making it easier to progress in certain areas. Membership however is not automatically conducive to success. There is no relation between success and EU membership.
[Daphne – Yes, there is. And if you can’t see it, I’m surprised. Of course, you need other factors as well, usually the ones you were born with plus some to do with your education and upbringing. Unfortunately, the average Maltese equates success with money, but there’s much more to it than that, and few of the alternatives are possible in Malta, if at all. However well Malta’s economy does, it is always going to remain 17 miles by nine.]
Different and new opportunities – that is what the EU has offered among many other things, and we, rightly so, are taking them up. But it has nothing to do with success, but with alternative successful futures.
I am sure that you know that. Just consider yourself and your career – a very successful one at that. As far as I know you are neither an avukat nor a tabib. Nevertheless, you have achieved a lot irrespective of EU membership.
[Daphne – Oh baby, I could have done SO MUCH MORE WITH AN EU PASSPORT WHEN I WAS 20.]
New generations though, our kids will have better opportunities as a result of EU membership. With that, I agree 100%.
Ghaziz Pierre,
Ser niktibha bil-Malti halli anke dawk l-imsieken laburisti li ma jafux jaqraw bl-Ingliz jifhmuni.
Qabel ma dhalna fl-EU il-laburisti kienu jahsbu li ahjar partnership. Wara li ghall-grazzja t’Alla dhalna, bdew jghidu li issa ahjar. Mela qabel kienu jahsbu kif riedhom jahsbu Sant, u wara bdew jahsbu kif riedhom Muscat.
DAWN IN-NIES L-ANQAS JAHSBU B’MOHHHOM MA JAFU, AHSEB U ARA KEMM JIRNEXXU (SUCCESS) FIL-HAJJA.
Ghal bniedem (insomma il-kelma ggib hekk) laburist jew dawk li kienu jigu jaqghu u jqumu jekk nidhlux fl-EU jew le zgur ma jqabblux l-EU mas-success, ghax m’hiex fid-DNA taghhom!!!!
FHIMT ISSA?
U biex anke huma taparsi jemmnu (anke l-LP) li l-EU hija ekwivalenti ghal success fil-hajja anke s-slogan taghhom jghid ‘direzzjoni sucess -Malta fl-Unjoni Ewropeja’
I think the problem with this argument is that success is very relative. The shop owner down the road may consider himself to be successful, and rightly so. He/she may still have been successful with or without membership, although this too is debatable. I, on the other hand, have different ambitions and my achievements over the past few years have resulted from Malta’s accession into the EU. So Pierre I beg to differ with your statement that ‘there is no relation between success and EU membership’. I was lucky enough to be in my early twenties when Malta joined the EU and, therefore, was able to choose a path many others were deprived of. Your reasoning is unfortunately very limited and in fact counter-productive. The success of some people may not depend on membership, but the success of others does. What’s more worrying is that many are aware of this and yet continue to vote selfishly and ignorantly purely because they can’t see beyond partisan politics. So basically, yes, all those who voted against EU membership, or for the Labour party in the election that followed, could have potentially ruined my future and that of many others like myself.
The Nationalist Party media co-ordinator should have this article copied and sent to every household in the last week before the EP electiion. Cheaper and definitely much more effective than all the leaflets they send which end up in the litter bin.
Their ruddy cheek makes me PUKE……….
The PN is taking on a heavy historical responsibility in trying its best and using all its means to keep the EU question a controversial, partisan and divisive one. I believed the PN when it had promised national reconciliation way back in 1987. How wrong I was! The PN desperately needs a good showing in the forthcoming elections…just one year after literally scraping the barrel with a 1,500 votes majority.
And what does it do? Since it has no other weapons with which to convince people, it turns to its old arsenal of divisiveness and scaremongering about the EU.
[Daphne – Albert, the Nationalists scaremonger about the European Union? I don’t believe this.]
I feel nauseated, as a Maltese citizen who values unity in the country more then anything else, by this sort of campaign by the Nationalist Party which, by the way, has moved so much to the right in the past weeks.
This party is so dishonest; it fields a “green” candidate but at the same time organises a secret meeting for hunters in which another PN candidate tries hard to explain that the government has sent its best lawyers to defend spring hunting! I believe the electorate is now getting used more and more to Nationalist strategy come election time. It’s wearing thin, my friends!
[Daphne – Right, so I’ll pop out and vote for the woman who votes Yes/No then, or for No2EU Sharon, or bloody Glenn Bedingfield who doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going, or Manwel Cuschieri’s brother, or Edward ‘I voted No so you can have jobs’ Scicluna, or End-to-End Cruises Montalto. Come off it, Albert, really.]
Albert, I value my EU passport “more then” anything else. National unity can go hang.
With the MLP fielding its candidates under the ostensibly Eurosceptic banner, the EU question is still alive and kicking, my misguided fellow citizen.
And just to pre-empt kev’s inevitable riposte: I’d choose a federal Europe over a Eurosceptic government any day.
Cannot recall reading any of Daphne’s articles with such a fiery tone, and I’ve read most of them. Prosit, Daphne.
“Instead, they’re staying home and leaving the decision to the rest of us” – I don’t think so. Everyone’s liable to err once…just once.
Sometimes it’s best said in Maltese – wicchom u sormhom xorta!
Right between the eyes, Daphne. Scicluna, an EP candidate, is even soliciting votes in CANADA. My niece received an email from him explaining how Malta is in the deep doo-doo since the deficit is out of control. Doh! Doesn’t he know that Canada is not (yet) a member of the EU? Although maybe the continental drift has been reversed.
Daphne, Brilliant and incisive as always. Thank goodness you have your own website…..but unfortunately it’s not enough. I can never understand why your very valid opinions never appear on the ‘other’ newspaper with the largest circulation.
[Daphne – Because I work with Standard Publications, not with Allied Newspapers….]
Like it or not that particular English language newspaper’s readership is too wide and influential to ignore. No disrespect meant to The Independent of-course, and they should really thank you on a Thursday and Sunday.
Mind you, one particular ”editor” does get up my nose, but then she’s so silly, she’s actually entertaining in a warped sort of way.
Did you read this Daph?
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20090520/local/caravans-to-return-to-bahar-ic-caghaq
I thought Jason was one of those Parl. Sec. that had enough guts to put words into action….sad, but no.
I really identified myself with the article. Well done.
I am not going to vote for PL and neither for NP in the European elections.These arrogant people we voted in should get a real lesson.To me Dr Josie Muscat makes a lot of sense and surely he is not arrogant and full of spin and talk with nothing concrete as this government.
Silvio, what you mean is that you don’t like Africans.