The GWU's code of silence

We all no doubt recall the TV news footage of the General Workers' Union delegates voting with great passion and conviction against membership in the European Union. Indeed some of the delegates were so passionately convinced that, when asked for a show of hands, they put up both hands.

We also no doubt remember Tony Zarb pounding with great passion on the podium and declaring unequivocally and with great conviction that joining the European Union would bring down the seven plagues of Egypt upon the heads of Maltese workers.

This conviction was apparently derived from a number of reports that the GWU had commissioned - reports which were studied and discussed by only the chosen few.

The delegates were not made privy to these 21 reports because the powers-that-be in South Street decided that they were not suitable for the delegates' consumption.

The first question that springs to mind is, why keep reports on which delegates have to vote secret? Logically, the GWU should have circulated the reports among the delegates prior to the meeting, thus giving everybody concerned the opportunity to read and digest the reports, and to arrive at a conclusion, for or against.

What sense did it make to treat these reports, which were after all based on researchable facts and information, as if they were top secret, eyes-only, nuclear launch codes?

Eventually the truth started leaking out and our suspicions were confirmed. In my opinion, this was all a masquerade for it seems that the powers-that-be in the GWU had already resolved that it was politically convenient for them to obtain a public vote opposing EU membership. The longer the GWU put off making public their anti-EU stand, the longer they were being henpecked and heckled by their divorced spouse, the Malta Labour Party.

The Malta Labour Party, desperate for support for their 'Switzerland in the Mediterranean' policy, needed a boost and the GWU obliged.

We now know that the delegates were not shown the reports, which categorically stated that EU membership would ultimately be beneficial to workers at different levels of society. What is truly bizarre is that a final report that was meant to summarise these 21 reports that, I repeat, seem to have all favoured EU membership, concluded the very opposite - that EU membership is not advantageous, precisely what the GWU wanted.

In life and especially in politics, credibility is central and fundamental. The public is not gullible and questions everything.

I would now expect that members of the GWU would seek to obtain more information and question whether or not their leaders have misled them.

I would now expect that, knowing what they now know, GWU members and delegates would reconsider their vote and ask themselves whether or not they would reconfirm their decision or possibly force a change.

Standing up to the GWU leadership is not a trivial challenge, but having a credible and unmanipulated GWU is in the national interest. Who will take up the challenge, I wonder?