The EU vote and conscience

Commenting on my article "The bishops and conscience" (January 16) Dr Austin Bencini says I assume there will be a referendum. This is not what I wrote. On the contrary, I wrote that in asking us to vote the bishops had foreclosed on the discussion of whether there should be a referendum or not.

The bishops and Dr Bencini disregard the valid reasons for objecting to a referendum or to a vote in a referendum. These objections include the dubious democratic qualities of a referendum.

In a referendum the "yes" and the "no" vote do not have equal power. Those who have objections or doubts have even less power as Dr Bencini conceded. In a referendum, the "yes" majority vote has the power to affect a "once and for all" decision. On a "yes" majority vote a decision can be taken which is irreversible.

A "no" majority vote does not have the same binding quality, since as I was reminded by one of my PN university colleagues yesterday, a "no" majority can always be overturned by another referendum. The Irish case is a good example of this.

In a referendum therefore only "yes" voters are respected and only they have binding power. In a general election there is an equality among voters. Contrary to Dr Bencini's claim that a referendum passes its power directly to the people, a referendum passes power only to a "yes" voter. A "no" voter can simply stay the process but not bind it.

There are, of course, other objections to the referendum that the government now wants to call, even if one had no misgivings about referenda per se. These include objections that the process has been vitiated by the misuse of public funds to promote one point of view only. They include objections to the misinformation and even lies about the implications of membership. They also include objections to the very poor package negotiated.

Apart from this, public opinion polls have shown there are a considerable amount of Maltese and Gozitan voters who are not apathetic as Dr Bencini suggests, but are undecided. A referendum now would force their vote instead of waiting till this number had reduced to an acceptable decided position either way.

In a situation where I would be forced to vote in a referendum despite my strong reservations about it, I myself would not hesitate to vote "no" and this in the interests of the common good. In this I will be considering in particular future generations whom we have already let down by allowing an economic situation in which too many of their parents are unemployed (and the number will grow with membership), whom we have burdened with an unsustainable public debt, whom we have deprived in the last 15 years of a decent education so that 54 per cent of them do not even have passes in Maltese, mathematics and English at SEC level and who, since they will not be the minority commercial class or knowledge workers who will do well whether in or out of the EU, need all the support we can muster.

In this decision I will make a preferential option for the poor.