How progressive is Joseph Muscat?

The Director of Communications of the Labour Party, Kurt Farrugia, has asked for an apology for an article of mine entilted ‘A sin against Democracy’ for what he termed “loaded allegations” in the face of the “documented opposition to abortion and euthanasia” on the part of Labour leader Joseph Muscat and MP Owen Bonnici.

Well, apparently to even contemplate raising issues on the thinking of Labour’s candidate Prime Minister seems anathema for the Labour Party. Yet it is important and necessary, and not just for the future of Church-state relations but more so for the wider political scenario.

The article prospected a cultural revolution going on within Labour, with the younger generation today in the driving seat adopting a more radical social agenda than had been the case. The signs to my mind all point in that direction but what makes Farrugia’s virulent reaction very strange is that it was the Labour Party itself which gave the green light for this cultural revolution within the left to take place.

Has Farrugia already forgotten that the PL was officially marginalised at the direct request of none other than Muscat himself from social issues which attract “moderate and progressive people of a liberal thought who are not identifying themselves with the Labour Party”? To carry this out Muscat clearly said that the progressive movement must be “wider” than the Labour Party.

This was published in an article by Muscat in It-Torca (February 7), on the very day the Labour Party delegates were to “unanimously” carry a motion put forward by Muscat to create the new progressive movement which “would not sweep anything under the carpet”, and for this reason declared that he personally would be proposing a Bill on divorce with a free vote to his parliamentarians.

Can the Director of Communications, therefore, in the light of the above declarations, explain why the PL has taken offence at the query raised on how far the new generation of ‘progressives’ intend to go?

If taken to its logical conclusion, what is there to stop this new movement “wider” than the Labour Party from adopting even more ‘liberal’ calls than divorce, say for the introduction of abortion, or what have you.

The Labour Party conference had, in fact, excluded the introduction of abortion but in so doing was it not contradicting the very exercise of having this wider ‘cultural’ movement of people who are not within the Labour Party? Is it for the Labour conference to say divorce ‘yes’ while abortion ‘no’. Same-sex marriages ‘yes’ but euthanasia ‘no’.

Is the Labour Party’s Director of Communications now saying that the new progressive movement “wider” than the Labour Party is nothing but an exact copy of the thinking of one person – namely the Leader of the Opposition – such that the new movement may not be wider in its liberal agenda than his personal beliefs?

If so, then why go for a seven-day general conference of the Labour Party to create a new liberal movement for people outside the party? Was the PL not giving up its agenda on such issues to this new movement?

Muscat had solemnly proclaimed on the same day his article appeared on It-Torca that adherents to this new Progressive Movement would not be binding themselves to a party but to a “thought” (“min ġej magħna mhux se jintrabat ma’ partit imma ma’ ħsieb”).

It is clear that Muscat has an agenda in mind. Nearly a month before the creation of the progressive movement he was quoted in The Times of January 20: “The conference is aware that there are moderates, progressives and liberals who, because of their roots, experiences and cultural and social orientation, do not identify with the Labour Party”.

What would happen if the citizens who are of wider liberal opinions than the Labour Party decide to present a Private Member’s Bill on abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriages or what have you?

Will the delegates say that what they meant was that the movement was only open to those who were prepared to vote for the divorce Bill of their leader and that no other item on the liberal agenda, which most parties of the left in Europe have espoused, is now permissible to be discussed even as a ‘thought’, because the party does not want it to be discussed.

While Muscat keeps us guessing it is our democratic right to keep querying how far he intends to go in his social agenda and in his relations with the Christian culture of this country.

Can Farrugia explain why on the day the Pope visited Malta the Leader of the Opposition failed to clarify these questions and in his weekly It-Torca article, and, instead of writing on future relations with the Church opted to write on his visit to China?

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott’s column is not appearing this week.