Editorial

The overwhelmingly Labourite audience (evenly divided, it seems, into pro-Sant and pro-Mintoff factions), gathered on Cospicua's Pjazza Gavino Gulia on Thursday for a recording of Xarabank, must have left that meeting (subsequently screened on Friday on TVM) much more bewildered than before the show (it truly was a show) started.

For the protagonist of the evening - Dom Mintoff - accompanied by his faithful sidekick Dr Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, failed to properly explain his decision, at the ripe age of 86 (although his ever combative mood belies it), to once more enter the political fray by giving birth to something called Front Maltin Inqumu.

The Front, rather than opposing membership per se, seems to be against the way Malta is conducting its negotiations with the European Union (rather late in the day, one would think).

On Thursday Mr Mintoff came out with the astonishing assertion that Dr Fenech Adami's government, by dealing with Brussels, was breaching the Constitution because it did not enjoy a two-thirds majority in Parliament, which would enable it to change the Constitution at will. Never mind that the PN received an electoral mandate to seek EU membership in 1998 - and in three elections before that!

It was not clear whether Mr Mintoff was describing the entire negotiation process as unconstitutional, or whether he was referring to what he considers the lack of adequate safeguards for the island's neutrality once Malta joins the EU.

In support of the latter contention, Mr Mintoff, abetted by the virulently anti-American Dr Mifsud Bonnici, brought up the spectre of "war" in which Malta would presumably find itself embroiled once it joined the EU, arguing that the Europeans were completely under the thumb of President Bush, who would go so far as to execute anyone in the United States for opposing a war against Iraq! He even dismissed one of his questioners' pointing out that Germany and France (two leading members of the EU) were in fact opposing US military action against Iraq, by saying that eventually they would have to bow to US pressure and go along.

The two former Labour Party leaders (and prime ministers) tried to paint the EU in the blackest colours, and insisted it was practically bent on war. When it was pointed out to them that other neutral states like Austria, Finland, Sweden and Ireland, had adapted themselves very well inside the EU without compromising their neutrality, Dr Mifsud Bonnici replied: "Ah, but our neutrality is different; it is not merely refusing to take sides in a conflict, it is to actively search for peace!"

Well, Dr Mifsud Bonnici still needs to learn a thing or two about the European Union, it seems. May we remind him that the present EU has evolved from the Coal and Steel Community formed in 1951 by France and Germany, traditional enemies who had been at war three times in 70 years, never to go to war again by pooling their most strategic commodities. It was the desire for peace in Europe - riven by two horrendous world wars - which brought about the founding of the European Economic Community in 1957 by six states, which eventually grew to 15 in 1995. The EU is now about to undertake its biggest enlargement by 2004, when it admits no fewer than 10 new states (including Malta, we hope, despite what the scaremongers have to say).

So it is the desire for peace, prosperity and stability which drives the European Union and not some sinister warmongering ambition as propounded by the Labour Party's leaders of the past, where both of them definitely still live.

No wonder many among the Labour crowd at Cospicua last Thursday would have preferred the Grand Old Man to explain his current relations with Alfred Sant, the current MLP leader, who has valiantly tried to exorcise the Mintoff ghost. But that is precisely what KMB tried his hardest to avoid.

Give him a sporting chance

Barely had the announcement of Dr Austin Sammut as the new chairman of PBS been made than the Labour Party and its organs turned their guns on him, blasting him as a Nationalist propagandist in whom they could not possibly have faith.

This is because Dr Sammut, until the day his appointment was announced, was a columnist for The Malta Independent on Sunday and sometimes expressed anti-Labour views.

This MLP tactic, seen countless times before, is intended to discredit, intimidate and demoralise certain Government appointees without giving them a sporting chance to prove themselves in their new job. In this case, the job does call for impartiality, which we are sure Dr Sammut (long familiar with the public broadcasting set-up) will exercise to the full.

After all, he has some illustrious examples to follow, such as that of the late Dr Anton Buttigieg, a long-serving MLP deputy leader, who on being elected President of Malta in 1976, had declared he would henceforth cast off his "old skin" and live up to his new obligations which demanded the utmost impartiality and objectivity.