A high degree of convergence between the government and Opposition was registered in yesterday’s parliamentary debate on the foreign affairs ministry budget, as speakers analysed the main regional developments and challenges.

Foreign Minister George Vella and Opposition foreign affairs’ spokesman Tonio Fenech shared a rather bleak outlook on the Libyan situation, where the international community appeared to be taking a rather a fatalistic attitude.

Countries that had been active in the revolution were now not involved in trying to unravel these problems, while increasingly the legitimacy of all governments was weakening. Mr Fenech encouraged the government to consider a more active role for Malta, given the traditional ties between the countries and the trust Malta enjoys.

Dr Vella replied that several efforts had been made but had not been successful. Mr Fenech ex-pressed criticism of certain elements of the European Union’s neighbourhood policy, mainly the so-called more-for-more ap-proach, which overlooked the fact that democracy could not be developed overnight.

Democracy, he said, was a process that developed together with other institutions and was intimately linked to economic development. Moreover some countries suspected that democracy was a European tool designed for Christianity to supplant Islam.

Mr Fenech denied the Prime Minister’s allegation that during his tenure as finance minister, public money was forwarded to a person within TRC Entertainment who had possible criminal associations. He said the person referred to by Joseph Muscat did not get a single euro of the public funds invested.

Rather, all this money was used for salaries of the Maltese workers engaged with the company.