100 days + 1 week: it didn’t take Muscat long to start talking about using Malta’s veto in the Mintoffian manner
Oh, what a bore. Here we go again: the right of veto as weapon to fight battles that have nothing to do with the vote in hand.
Mintoff loved it, turning Malta in those pre-EU days into a cross between free Europe’s laughing-stock and pariah. Now Muscat is going to try his hand at it, and our inevitable suspicion will be that this is just the way of opening the door on a wave of anti-EU sentiment and propaganda and an eventual pull-out.
We forget how long five years actually are, and what a lot can happen.
timesofmalta.com reports just now:
Asked by timesofmalta.com whether Malta still intended using its veto on unrelated measures to force the EU to help on migration, Dr Muscat said that what he used to say in opposition still remains valid.
“There are no holds barred on this issue,” he said.
“If need be we’ll use our veto on unrelated EU measures to make sure that the EU listens to our demands.”
In opposition, Labour was very critical of the government for not insisting on more solidarity on migration and had suggested that Malta should block unrelated EU initiatives to force the EU member states act on more solidarity.
Since joining the EU Malta never used its veto to block EU initiatives.
In other words, Muscat’s government is planning to veto EU initiatives on matters that have nothing to do with illegal migration, so as to blackmail and threaten Malta’s fellow member states into giving in to our demands, whatever they might be, on migration.
Back to the days when Malta was the snarling mad dog holed up in a corner and threatening to bite unless it was thrown the bone it wanted.
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Pure, undiluted blackmail.
Blackmail is always wrong, wherever and whenever it happens.
As Konrad Mizzi would say, shame on you, Joseph Muscat.
In Joseph Cuschieri, Muscat will find a willing supporter. Hadn’t he said Malta should block assistance to Greece to force the realisation of Malta’s sixth seat in the European parliament?
He won’t find his support, not after Muscat appointed Lou Bondi to the National Festivities Commission.
So first it was What the Heck, and now it’s the veto.
Has he run out of convincing arguments already? Didn’t he have a 1kg roadmap to solve everything? There was no mention of the veto in the roadmap.
The roadmap is currently out of order as they are still waiting for the shipment of the GPS to arrive (it is currently out of stock)
And then he will publicly wonder why the EU won’t trust him and why foreign investment goes down. And, lo and behold, the people will be informed it is Brussels’s fault, and they will probably become prey to Labour’s increasing anti-EU propaganda.
There is hardly any veto power left, and moreover, Joseph has neither the balls nor the clout to pull anything at EU level.
The EU has the power to flatten us the moment we try to pull anything of this sort. But of course you imbecile statists haven’t kept yourselves updated so you take Joseph’s blather at face value, failing to recognise it for what it is: BS.
[Daphne – Bore on, Kevin. Oh, and incidentally I noticed last Sunday that your wife and her awful tribe now feel able to start going to the smart places to swim, ghax Malta taghhom. Which means that everyone else will not, because the main reason we went to places like that is to avoid people like them. Talk about lowering the tone. At least there is one beach which remains blissfully rabble-free either because they’re still too insecure to go there or because they haven’t yet twigged. Amazing how they can’t go anywhere without turning the place into a chav slum, both visually and aurally.]
Yes, Daphne, Sharon returned the following day and told me all about your travails.
[Daphne – No travails. I noticed that the atmosphere was distinctly different to what it usually is, as soon as I went in. And then I noticed why, failed to be surprised, and simply went to the other place, which they haven’t discovered because there’s nobody telling them it’s the place to be.]
Having to change plans because of a chav invasion is no joke. Arukaza. No smart places left for smart people to enjoy their bliss.
[Daphne – I’ve just said that there is at least one, Kevin, so don’t misquote me.]
But back to the subject. So you think Joseph has the balls and the clout to do a Mintoff at EU level. If this is what the smart people are saying no wonder there are no smart places left.
[Daphne – Mintoff had no balls. He was a notorious coward. And he didn’t have clout but the means of blackmail and threat, which is entirely different. It’s the same with this one, except that he doesn’t have a fixation about being poisoned, like Mintoff did.]
‘Except that he doesn’t have a fixation about being poisioned….’ as yet !
Good for you, Daphne. Let’s hope they’ll never discover this “blissfully rabble-free” gem where smart people can blissfully reflect on being both blissful and ignorant.
The chavs! They’re like termites, hux, xi dwejjaq…
[Daphne – Or as my husband put it while driving away: “What can one do? They’ve learned how to swim.”]
How sweet of your hubby to join you on your sunseeking escapades, Lady D. And his jokes are so hilarious you wouldn’t expect it from an ever-smiling prince.
[Daphne – Well, Kevin, it was a Sunday, though I take it you don’t join yours and leave her instead to the sophisticated company of her assorted siblings and Pullicino Orlando. Incidentally, that wasn’t a joke, but a statement of fact. That’s exactly why the beaches are so crowded: because they’ve learned how to swim and they also have cars. Up until my teens and even early 20s, the beaches were empty. Swimming and sunbathing for recreational purposes were alien concepts among those who did not actually live on the coast. And most people couldn’t get to the beach without a car anyway. When they did, the men swam in cut-off jeans because they didn’t have trunks and the women swam in shorts and a T-shirt. Lots of them clung to those black inner tubes of lorry tyres and I even remember seeing grown women wearing inflatable arm bands. It was the same with Sliema/Paceville/Spinola 25/30 years ago – just people who lived there and the rest stayed in their own towns and villages (I’m tempted to add ‘where they belonged’). Rajt Malta tinbidel, insomma. Now everybody’s moved to Sliema and the real Slimizi have moved out to get away from them.]
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130624/local/minister-to-hold-street-meetings-to-discuss-poverty.475217
You seem to have missed another Mintoff style strategy. Street meetings. Hemm il-konsulenta konta l-faqar fl-istampa ukoll. How appropriate.
So that is why that non elected president of the EU and covert Jesuit Herman van Rompuy is visiting Malta all of a sudden.
He wants Joseph to stop being a naughty boy and to lay off the veto thing and let Malta be continually used as a storage depot for hoards of Africans.
Mintoff at one point pretended to have had meetings with other diplomats and heads of state, told the press about the meetings, but all diplomats in Malta thought that the meetings never took place. Just another way for him to pretend he had clout when he didn’t.
Of course, we’ve seen how aggressive Muscat can be. He takes things so personally and then tries to make others feel so bad about ” hurting” him.
He is like Mintoff, prone to sudden outbursts by the looks of it.
And why on Earth would he use a veto like that? Does he think that is an honorable way of doing business?
Little wonder then that he gives negotiators and career diplomats short shrift.
Same attitude as with his “Wot the Hack” refusal to speak in English in Brussels.
Brilliant. I see the intention is to be difficult with the EU and a walkover for the Chinese.
When in Governemnt, Berlusconi had ceded to the demands of the crancky Bossi with the Bossi Fini Act and followed this up with the “pushbacks” policy and by bribing his corrupt mate Gaddafi to hold back the landings in Lampedusa.
Italy managed to hold landings for a very short while but with the Hirsi Jamaa & Others case Italy was humiliated for Berlusconi’s antics when in 2012, the European Court of Human Rights Chamber found against Italy that the “pushback” policy violated various articles of EU Convention on HR.
It beggars belief how a PM accompanied by his Minister of Interior utters the “Pushbacks”. Don’t they have legal consultants to brief them on the ramifications of using such a word and in such a brazen fashion while visiting an EU Office.
A PM is a leader not a Pied Piper, should always act always that manner and should never embarrass Malta on the International scene.
The same goes for the bloated frog Minister Mallia. The Italians used Malta’s fragility when their idiot Roberto Maroni used to make visits to Carm Mifsud Bonnici and we should have learned from the PN’s faux pas. So look for political solutions, hard as they may be, but not by committing foolish diplomatic moves and resorting to childish antics.
Nuzaw il-veto hey…tsk tsk. Twaqqghuniex aktar ghaz-zufjett u tghallmu tmexxu b’responsabbilta.
Naħseb ilhom li waqqgħuna għaż-żufjett. Init għalfejn taħseb li ilhom tant jgħidu li l-UE u l-IMF m’għandhomx fiduċja fihom (meta waħħlu f’xi komplott ta’ Tonio Fenech)?
The PM is trying to recover the drop in his popularity revealed in the Malta Today surveys.
He will use a technique to be called “veto for votes.”