As the two main parties line up their candidates for the June European Parliament election, the electorate will once again be bombarded with political propaganda in a dose that will leave most people weary of the whole exercise.
Never mind for a moment how many candidates will be contesting, or whether the country will be voting for five or six candidates, the outcome of the election will naturally also be taken as a vote of confidence in the party that wins more seats than the other, as happened in the last election for the European Parliament. Not that this will have a bearing on the outcome of a general election but, as in the case of local elections, the results often give telling messages to the parties. In any case, what counts most in the Euro-Parliament elections is that the country elects candidates with proven ability to give a valuable contribution on Malta's behalf. Unfortunately, the relevance of this argument may lose much of its importance at the electioneering stage.
The irony is that Labour is today posing as a champion defender of Malta's interests in the European Parliament when only up to six years ago it was dead set against membership. Six years is indeed a very short time in the political life of a country and it is difficult for those who fought so hard to see Malta take its place in the European Union to come to terms with Labour's conversion to the membership idea. Even though Labour has formally changed its policy, there are many who still doubt the political sincerity of the move and feel that more time has yet to pass in order to be able to see if the party truly believes in Malta's membership.
What particularly troubles those who fall in this category is the fact that, while officially the party is now committed to membership, scepticism does not appear to have been completely eliminated from certain quarters. Even more ironical is the inclusion in Labour's line-up of candidates who had been strong opponents to membership. Indeed, even the party leader himself is known to have been strongly against membership, telling supporters at the time that he was proud to work in a party that was urging the electorate to vote "no".
If trust is so important in politics, as indeed it is, how is it possible to trust politicians who were so fundamentally wrong in judging the best course for the island's political future? In their view, Malta should not have joined the EU and ought to have instead worked for the island to become a "Switzerland in the Mediterranean", whatever that was supposed to mean, a direction later changed to "partnership". But the people had well understood the difference between the two goals - partnership and membership - and opted for the second, first in a referendum and, subsequently, in a general election.
Labour had read the referendum outcome wrongly, but there was then no quibbling about the election result: The majority again preferred seeing Malta join the EU. It is good that Labour has come round to agreeing to this, too, but can those who still suspect Labour's political sincerity be blamed when considering how strong the party had been against membership?
The choice for representation in the European Parliament ought to fall for those who truly believe in the validity of Malta's place in the EU and who can give the best contribution in the national interest.