Aversion therapy

No doubt about it, the decision whether Malta should become a member of the EU or stay a non-member is a key national issue, whatever one's position over it. Battle lines have been drawn. They stretch along the political arena. Well may the bishops call for a national rather than a partisan perspective. Fact is that, for years, Malta's relationship with the EU has been getting the full partisan Monty, but with the political leaders competing feverishly to unclothe the other side. The PM and the opposition leader each gives his fair share, lest either be outdone regarding who is the toughest, most aggressive political gladiator around.

Fact is that the issue is sinking further into the political mire. The two opposing sides seem to be unable to try to put across their views in the form of a reasoned argument, aimed at people with their own mind and intelligence. The voters have been typecast as crude political fodder. The deterioration is far from complete. Vandalism of billboards and political thuggery are no more than the other side of extremely expressed positions. These are presented as the absolute truth, whereby those who do not subscribe to it must be either stupid or traitors.

The prime minister rants at the GWU for coming out against membership. He does not merely disagree with it, as is his right as much as it is the union's to disagree with him. He accuses it with betraying the workers. The opposition leader - apparently softening his visible stand against the EU, crudely echoed in statements by smaller fry painting the Union as a stopover in hell - now tests the electorate's intelligence with the claim that the choice is not being in or out of the EU.

There is membership and there is non-membership. Euro-Mediterranean countries that do not wish to be, or are not entitled to become members of the EU, can participate, as non-members, in what was years ago termed by EU linguistic stylists as a "partnership".

It is an arrangement detailed by the EU, not one where non-members can pick and choose from. The word partnership, a lifesaver for the millstone slogan Switzerland-in-the-Mediterranean, to which it is still equated by the Labour leader, lends itself easily to creating confusion. The Nationalists, rather than stressing that, introduce ugly racial connotations through the fact that Malta will be on the same footing as North African countries, as a non-member of the EU but part of the union's Euro-Med process.

These unwholesome positions are painfully clear, more than three weeks ahead of the referendum due March 8, and an unknown period of time before the subsequent general election. They constitute a national malaise that will steadily feed off the people through incessant generation of confusion, including totally unfounded claims that (on the one hand) membership will open access to a new market of 500 million consumers, and that (on the other hand) non-membership will safeguard Maltese industry from going bust. All that will not contribute to some fine democratic exercise when it is time to vote.

Ironically, the opposing parties themselves may help to contain the malaise. By playing the music so incessantly and loud, they have triggered a paradoxical form of aversion therapy. It is not uncommon to find voters who are bored sick with the amount of activities related to the EU, and reporting thereof that is being flung at them. Experts in PR and spin hold that repeating something often enough makes people believe it, whether it is true or not. Against that there is the old-fashioned view that tedious repetition makes tatters of whatever interest there may have been in the first place.

It should not be like that. There ought to be a reasoned debate, carried out with intelligence rather than cunning, aiming at people's minds rather than their emotions. Aversion therapy is used in trying to control the dangerous habit of heavy smoking. The democratic system is something else. People should be encouraged to take a genuine interest to form their decision, not to be disgusted into turning away and refusing to pay any attention.