Alfred Sant was a hopeless/clueless politician but academically he is a very bright man and his writing is never biased. I have never liked Alfred Sant the politician but I think Alfred Sant the author is among the top talents (if not the best) we have in Malta.

What Dr. Sant fails to mention, as do all the naysayers and British euro-sceptics, is that the Euro will remain there as long as there is the political will in Europe for it.

But that omission can be expected from a man like Dr. Sant. Will and determination to put stability before political expediency is not his forte. As The Economist put it, (and damn me if that dry wit is too relevant for comfort today):

“ONLY on a small, sun-drenched Mediterranean island would a government be swept out of office over the weighty matter of a new yacht marina. That, at least, was the affair that caused a member of Malta’s ruling Labour Party to vote against his government and force an early general election on September 5th—which his party then lost.

Elected in 1996, the Malta Labour Party had held on to power by the thread of a one-seat majority. The next poll was not due until 2001. But Labour had not counted on the mischief-making of Dom Mintoff, an old (82) and old-fashioned socialist and firebrand ex-prime minister with pals in Libya, whose coast lies just 320 kilometres (200 miles) away.”

– The Economist, September 10th, 1998.

Alfred Sant has no time at all for helping to write Labour’s electoral programme,

Karmenu Vella was commissioned by Joseph to write his 51 promises into a fictional election programme.

The man with proven fiction writing skills has been sidelined and a dinosaur resurrected to do the job instead.

Typical of a leader, obviously out of political depth needed to run a country in good times, let alone in a period of a world economical crisis.

Such is the situation at the Labour Party. Such is the ominous danger Malta faces at election time.

The owner of the shop cheekily asked this woman if she intends to read it, and she replied that she does not read but such a book will be very nice in the “vetrina”.