Shame on you

The Labour Party leadership, having given up on winning the referendum by the force of the better argument, has decided that the only chance of avoiding heavy defeat on Saturday is to rely on a combination of the party faithful and the scared.

To try to keep the party faithful within the fold, Alfred Sant rants and screams from his podium at mass meetings; to increase the number of scared people is a much more complicated affair. It requires an orchestrated, systematic campaign of whispers, scaremongering and misinformation by the Labour Party. It requires the fabrication of a multitude of outright untruths. And it requires the endless and mindless repetition of those untruths in the hope that at least some of them will be translated into abstentions or votes against the interests of the voters themselves.

Evarist Bartolo's piece yesterday has to be seen in this light - it is a shameless attempt to scare people into the no camp. The subject of the article - Church schools - is an unusually ironic one, given that Labour in the past has distinguished itself not by its care and solicitude for the Church schools but by the policies it forcefully espoused that led to their temporary closure. If it were not for the determination, courage and resolve of the very people that Mr Bartolo is now trying to co-opt - parents, teachers and all those involved in the running of these schools - that closure might not have been so temporary at all.

What is Mr Bartolo saying? In his usual roundabout, insidious way he seems to be implying that what he calls "state aid" to Church schools will in some way be imperiled by EU state aid rules and by developments within the WTO.

He is wrong and we have already repeatedly said so on all the media. No amount of sly circumlocution and selective quotation can change that. What are the facts?

Firstly, financial support given to Church schools is not state aid at all but is linked to the agreement on Church property reached between Malta and the Holy See of November 1991.

Secondly, even if this were not the case, financial support given to schools is not considered by the European Union to fall under state aid rules. In fact, there are numerous examples of similar aid given by governments of current member states of the Union to educational establishments. Aid given by the state in the field of education does not even need to be notified to the Commission as do other types of state aids that are deemed perfectly acceptable by the EU. The government has repeatedly stated this - Mr Bartolo chooses not to hear it.

Thirdly, in the context of the WTO and the GATS, the EU is consulting with us as an acceding country as to what our position will be on allowing the freedom of establishment in the education sector. Our position - and the general feeling - is that such an opening up should not occur. In a document circulated at a seminar held for candidate countries on February 18, the Commission stated that it "does not propose commitments in education".

Member states thus fully retain the right to decide the most appropriate organisation of their education systems. As members of the Union we have a chance to influence policy and make sure this position is maintained. As outsiders we will have to watch the battle between the giants in the World Trade Organisation and hope that the outcome is one that does not hurt us.

The record of this government on education is a solid one. We have always treated education as a priority, as the tool to ensure the realisation of the full potential of the Maltese people. We have not just said this. We have taken solid measures to ensure that this conviction is translated into tangible results, from the computerisation and networking of our schools to the modernisation, expansion and upgrading of our university, the reform in technology education leading to the establishment of the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology and the significant improvement of all school facilities through the Foundation for Tomorrow's Schools, with an investment of over Lm60 million over the next eight years.

This is what education in Malta needs - solid policy and successful implementation. Not the insinuations and threats offered by the Labour camp.

My message to Mr Bartolo and the rest of the Labour leadership is a simple one. Stop saying untruths. Stop treating the Maltese people like little children who you can scare and trick into submission. You are not credible.

Today I am answering you.

On Saturday the Maltese people will.

Dr Galea is minister of education