Proffers

The state of the economy and how we are to get Malta moving hardly interests Prime Minister Fenech Adami and his Nationalist Party. The editor of The Sunday Times has declared that all such considerations are irrelevant. The PN and its allies pretend that the only issue worthy of note is membership of the EU. All the rest is trivial.

This is not the feedback Labour obtains from its contacts with all sectors of our society. They are worried about the stalemates embedded in most areas of the national scene, and extremely interested to understand how these can be overcome. Labour has set out to face such issues.

We are not suggesting there is some magic wand that can be waved for milk and honey to flow. However, with a reasonable long-term plan, tailored to our situation, that mobilises creative forces in the country to make their contribution, we can tackle outstanding problems, and create a better future.

On tourism, on manufacturing, on farming and fisheries, Labour is presenting a specific set of innovative proposals. Their objectives are to promote economic growth and to brake the inexorable rise of taxation under the stewardship of Dr Fenech Adami.

Despite the all-out effort to demonise and ridicule Labour, more people are rallying around the call for effective action. The uninspiring policies - if they can be called that - which the PN are presenting for the election, amount to more of the same. Ineffective nostrums that are now well beyond their sell-by date are being recycled to look new. The tactic is not working.

To make matters worse, the PN team is a discredited lot whose arrogance and incompetence have become evident to many voters. Which is why the PN desperately tries to hide behind the figleaf of the EU. Unfortunately for them, they do not have the assurance of Neptune in the Palace courtyard, that the fig leaf is safely stuck in place.

By contrast, Labour's position is to proffer meaningful strategies for the future, in which relations with the EU are an important element but certainly not the only, or the overriding one.

Regarding Malta's relations with the European Union, Labour has remained consistent.

Our 1998 electoral programme declared: "After the process of implementing a free trade zone has been fully achieved, a Labour government will turn to citizens and, against the background of the experience which would have developed and matured in relations with the European Union request them to choose whether they should continue to develop ever closer relations with the Union according to the model adopted today by the Labour government, or whether they would wish to take steps that would lead to full membership of the European Union."

In January of this year, Dr Fenech Adami presented a resolution to parliament, by which he proposed to run a consultative referendum in March 2003, to get Malta into the EU, as a full member. Labour tabled an amendment to the prime minister's text. The opposition stated why it believed that full EU membership is not in Malta's interests, and why partnership with the EU would be a better option.

Furthermore, Labour declared that the question put by the government was not acceptable since it wanted voters only to declare yes or no on the membership proposal. However, the real choice was between membership and partnership but voters were not being given that choice. This apart from the huge democratic deficit underpinning the referendum process and its financing.

Later, the prime minister wrote to me to suggest we should pronounce ourselves about the referendum vote. I replied that as a compromise, it would be best if at first the election was held, while both sides would agree to organise, afterwards, the referendum he was so keen on. This would be subject to rules accepted by both sides, so that the outcome would be accepted by all. The prime minister arrogantly turned down this suggestion. Labour then advised voters to either say nay, cancel their vote or abstain on the consultative referendum.

Subsequently, the yes vote only obtained 48 per cent of the eligible votes. Like the PN, Dr Giorgio Borg Olivier, The Times and The Sunday Times when faced with the outcome of the 1956 integration referendum, Labour rightly claimed that the case for full membership of the EU presented by the Fenech Adami administration had been turned down by the people. Labour's position was also similar to the one adopted by The Times and The Sunday Times, following the 1964 independence referendum.

And so, quite late in the day, the PM decided to call an April election.

Labour's programme "A Better Future" proffers the following line of action: "The aim of a Labour government will be to call a referendum during the next legislature, in which the people will be invited to choose between the partnership agreement it would have negotiated with the European Union, and full membership of the European Union. The government will accept the result of the referendum and will implement the decision taken. A genuine effort will be conducted to reach an understanding with the opposition so that this referendum will be agreed to by the political parties, and the result considered final by everybody."

In all this, Labour's position has remained coherent, in line with the principles we uphold, and fair. The same can hardly be said for the Dr Fenech Adami's intransigence and tunnel vision in facing up to the fundamental problems of our society.