Former Labour candidate Sharon Ellul Bonici is planning to launch her upcoming bid for the European Parliament elections in 2009 with a movement she will unveil right after the Labour leadership election in June.
Ellul Bonici yesterday said she will be one of a group of candidates for EU Democrats Malta, but stopped short of mentioning any prospective candidates.
She said the group is not campaigning for withdrawal from the EU. “We want to take Malta out of its medieval status quo. We are in favour of divorce and gay rights, and against the Lisbon Treaty,” she said, adding that only a few Maltese were truly aware of the implications of the treaty which had replaced the discarded EU Constitution.
She said the group was against hunting, ruling out any alliance with the Maltese hunting lobby.
She also said Labour was “totally out of the picture”, saying the movement was being launched in June for its significance with Denmark’s June Movement, the party launched by former MEP Jens-Peter Bonde. “There is nobody from old Labour, it’s a very young movement and we won’t be contesting national elections.”
Ellul Bonici is currently vice-president of the eurosceptic EUDemocrats (EUD), a European political party she founded with Bonde. The EUD includes MEPs which form part of the Independence/Democracy (ID) bloc in the European Parliament.
In a video launching the movement on youtube.com, Ellul Bonici also criticises comments Labour secretary-general Jason Micallef. The video’s captions read: “The party line that Jason talks about is the control by the European socialists. And the European socialists do not permit freedom of expression if it is criticism of the EU, even if this would be of detriment to our country… the European socialists work for EU power to be centralised in Brussels.”
Asked whether her previous involvement in the anti-EU movement back in 2003 would be a negative to her campaign, given that both major political parties have converged on the EU issue, Ellul Bonici said she had accepted the democratic decision of the people in favour of EU movement.
“To me it was the referendum that counted. The truth is Labour has shifted from its opposition to the EU, to a position today where it is scared of criticising the EU because the PN will attack it with the accusation that it wants to withdraw from the EU. Labour is literally mute on what is detrimental to Malta.”
Ellul Bonici was the figurehead of the No2EU movement in the run-up to the 2003 referendum on European accession.
Following Labour’s loss in the 2003 elections after the victory of the ‘yes’ vote at the March referendum, the party was eager to distance itself from the eurosceptic campaigner. She was refused the chance to contest for a Labour candidature for the European Parliament when she was turned down by the party’s vigilance board, which objected to her past claims that Labour should join the eurosceptic Europe of Democracies (EDD) grouping in the European Parliament rather than the European Socialists (PES).

mvella@mediatoday.com.mt