Cuschieri wants his seat... not rhetoric

Joseph Cuschieri – who for the past 18 months has been denied the opportunity to take on observer status as Malta’s sixth MEP – has in an open letter urged the European Parliament president to treat his case with urgency.

Mr Cuschieri is hoping to grab the attention of Jerzy Buzek when he arrives in Malta tomorrow for a two-day visit.

“During your visit to Malta I eagerly expect to hear from you... a concrete offer for a concrete solution to the observer status predicament... rather than yet more rhetoric on this extremely important national and European matter,” he said.

This is the second letter that a disillusioned Mr Cuschieri is writing to a top European official. Last February he had written to Martin Schultz, leader of the Socialist group in the EP, asking what was being done to speed up the process.

After giving up his seat in Parliament to enable the co-option of Labour leader Joseph Muscat in 2008 – which he has recently gone to pains to stress is the best decision he ever took – Mr Cuschieri went on to contest the MEP election in June 2009.

He clinched Malta’s promised sixth seat after earning the highest number of votes after the five elected MEPs.

Last year he had complained the sixth seat was “still a dream”, something he reiterated in his letter to Prof. Buzek in which he protested he was being “unjustly deprived” from starting his work, due to the EP’s “inefficiency and lack of concrete initiative”.

This, coupled with the “excessive and unwarranted bureaucracy” in some member states, constituted a “lack of respect towards Maltese and Gozitans”.

“In my opinion, this is unacceptable in a modern democracy since it leads to a democratic deficit which is unquestionably affecting Malta in a negative way,” he said.

He added that it was “unacceptable” that citizens were being taken for a ride.