The Labour elVE buzzword of the moment is 'prudent'

Published: March 20, 2011 at 7:53pm

He'll huff and he'll puff and he'll blow your house down: Joseph Muscat explains why Malta should be prudent.

Maltastar, today

JOSEPH MUSCAT ON LIBYA CRISIS: MALTA SHOULD BE PRUDENT

The Labour Party Leader Joseph Muscat said that Malta should continue to be prudent, serving as a Mediterranean hub and keeping its security as the utmost priority.

The Leader of the Opposition was speaking on One Radio this morning, He said that there seemed to be a consensus in Malta on the country’s foreign policy, that is Malta should not serve as a military base.

Joseph Muscat said, Malta should serve as a humanitarian hub. All those in need should be able to find their assistance in Malta. It should be the country which helped the Libyan people.

He said that the people seemed to be appreciating more the need to be prudent.

“We have to keep in mind our size and historic mission and it is better, at this point, to say less rather than more. Our security has to be our utmost priority. We have been prudent and we will continue to be so.” said Muscat.

He added “this generation is experiencing for the first time the value of peace, how better it was to live in a peaceful zone rather than in a zone that was under conflict”.

Malta, he said, was right to offer its help to countries to help evacuate their people from Libya when the uprising started and the opposition had supported the government in this.




9 Comments Comment

  1. Coconut Shy says:

    very amusing piece by Andrew Borg Cardona, about Kurt the Coconut’s recent discovery of Twitter:

    http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110319/opinion/tweeting-on-a-private-jet

  2. Peter Borg says:

    “this generation is experiencing for the first time the value of peace, how better it was to live in a peaceful zone rather than in a zone that was under conflict”

    Funny how he made a meal of it (the conflict), advocating intense tourism campaigns when our neighbours were being butchered.

  3. Xmun says:

    I do not agree with Joe Muscat that there is consensus on foreign policy between the political parties in Malta. Labour is only agreeing with the government because like in many other instances it is best not to have an opinion not to miss out on a vote or two. The end justifies the means is what we have been told.

    • ciccio2011 says:

      After this debacle, the Electoral Commission should seriously consider introducing the “neutral” option (besides the yes and no boxes) on the ballot paper in the divorce referendum.

  4. ciccio2011 says:

    Eureka! I think that’s it, Antoine. “Militarily neutral” = “prudent”.

  5. H.P. Baxxter says:

    What BLASTED historic mission?

    Let us give this moron a history lesson. In the 13th century, Enrico Pescatore set off from Malta to capture Crete with 300 “juvenes maltenses”. Out of a population of less than 10000.

    The Great Siege I think we’ve heard enough about.

    In the 17th and 18th century, the Order couldn’t keep up with demands for letters of marque so Maltese ship owners and sailors could sail the heaving brine on corsairing missions.

    Malta sent a contingent as part of the Toulon squadron in the American War of Independence.

    In the run up to, and during, the Napoleonic wars, the British were recruiting Maltese sailors and gunners by the bucketful.

    Tiny Malta sent contingents to the Sudan Campaign and the Boer War.

    Maltese sailors were on board Royal Navy vessels as far away as Jutland during the First World War.

    The Second World War we’ve pretty much covered.

    This, then, is a martial nation. The “nurse of the Mediterranean” historical mission is a complete fabrication.

    If by “history”, Muscat means “The World since The Year Zero – 1972” then that’s another matter.

    • A.Attard says:

      Correct. We were never neutral before Mintoff.

      Before the Great Siege there were many other smaller sieges which were bravely won even before 1530 and the arival of the Order of St. John meaning we fought ALONE and won. The one “tal-hobza u gbejna” is the stuff of leggends

      During the Napoleonic wars there were maltese on both sides.

      Also in WW1 many maltese served in Saloniki

      • C Falzon says:

        “Correct. We were never neutral before Mintoff.”

        And neither were we after, or even today. Far from making us neutral Mintoff aligned us with the worst of the communist dictatorships as well as Gaddafi’s regime.

        Post 1987 we thankfully steered away from communism but not, it now seems, from Gaddafi.

      • H.P. Baxxter says:

        Peaceniks, not neutral. Other countries are neutral, but their government, and many of their people, have retained that martial spark which is the lifeblood of a nation, even after 1945. Not us. We look more like a hippie commune than a proper country.

        It all started with association “military base = The British = evil, therefore anything military is to be despised.” We drove the final nail into the coffin with military labour corps and that most loathsome of epithets: “Mietna ta’ xejn.”

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