A state of vassals

When I first glanced at the heading of the report (December 3) "Fenech Adami declared 'Achiever/European of the Year'", my initial reaction was to ask myself: achiever of what?

On reading the report I found out that this honour was bestowed on our prime minister, not for achieving economic or social progress for Malta and the Maltese people, but for winning a cliffhanger vote for EU membership and avoiding the prospect of the smallest candidate blocking enlargement!

How Dr Fenech Adami has managed to achieve that cliffhanger result was definitely not taken into consideration, as otherwise, he would have been shown to be the winner of the most successful political trick in all the candidate countries - as I.M. Beck confirmed recently in his column when he wrote that "the end (Malta taking its right place in the EU") more than justified the means"!

This is the kind of "Europe" we are being herded into on May 1, 2004. Where kow-towing to the EU bureaucrats is much more important - and hence, rewarded - than working in the interest of your country and people.

Do the EU bureaucrats now expect us Maltese to stand up and sing the Ode to Joy for the honour conferred on Dr Fenech Adami and forget all about the budget? And the consequent sacrifices we have to put up with in order to become "a vassal state" of the EU? What a joke!

May I now spare the final thought to I.M. Beck, back from his belated holiday. Relying on the assumption that readers would have forgotten what he and I had written, Beck just took the word "Labour" (which meant the Labour government) and asked: "Since when has the Malta Labour Party become a state?" How silly of me not to realise that Beck has to be spoon-fed to understand!

I.M. Beck - being such a good teacher of English - should know that "a state" can either mean a country or its government. So as I had already referred to "the diplomatic and friendly relations the Labour government of the 1970s had with North Korea...", when I then wrote the word "Labour" I was referring to that Labour government and not the Malta Labour Party!

But as I.M. Beck knew he did not have a leg to stand on, he tried standing on a straw. More so when he tried to justify his argument by referring to North Korea, "armed and trained the shock-troopers (sic!) of the regime...", as his reason why he considers the Labour government of the time as having become "a vassal" of North Korea!

Using I.M. Beck's own logic then, now that China has just "armed and trained" the shock-troopers of the present regime, by supplying guns, ammunition etc..., the present PN government has not only become "a vassal state" of the EU but also of China!

Nice shooting at your own foot, Andrew!