Yet again your columnist Mr Michael Falzon got all heated up just because Labour candidate and accountant Joe Sammut wrote an article in which he proved beyond any reasonable doubt, that Malta’s independence no longer exists with Malta as an EU state. Joe Sammut had cited how the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy restrains Malta, for example, from recognising South Ossetia as a sovereign country, just as Malta had no option but to recognise the independence of Kosovo.
Michael Falzon wrote: “He (Joe Sammut) forgets that Malta recognised the independence of Kosovo when it suited her (Sic!), much later than most other EU member States”! As if being forced to jump off a cliff with others, but due to dithering you jump after most of the others, would make any difference to the end result – you end up with them on a marble slab at the hospital’s mortuary!
MaltaToday has no longer the right to recognise or not recognise the independence and sovereignty of any other country. It has to follow what the EU decides. While Michael Falzon mentions other points raised by Joe Sammut, such as the base interest rate imposed by the EU’s Central Bank, and the illegal immigration problem which Joe Sammut had attributed it to Malta’s membership of the EU and Malta’s entry into the Schengen Zone, Mr Falzon did not produce any argument to counter Joe Sammut’s claims. Just as he had no counter argument to Joe Sammut’s reference to the “obscene interference in the Shipyards’ privatisation process, which led to a short two-worded order from a woman who came from goodness knows where and is called a Commissioner”.
I can understand Michael Falzon’s unwillingness to comment on this point since this is highly embarrassing to GonziPN. And is another crystal clear proof of how Malta’s independence today is not worth the paper it’s written on!
All Michael Falzon tried to do – once he had no arguments to counter those of Joe Sammut – was to prove that the Labour Party still has people who are still opposed to EU membership (and time is proving them right!) So what, Mr Falzon? What is wrong in having people with different opinions on certain specific subjects in a truly democratic party? If I remember correctly, only under despotic regimes are party members precluded from having and expressing different opinions to those of the party leadership. Are we to understand that the PN today is imitating those despotic regimes?
During the first public debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, the Republican candidate for the Presidency of the Untied States, was frequently heard priding himself on having criticised harshly, and even voted against, his own Republican administration on quite a number of issues. And despite John McCain’s past history as a “maverick” in the Republican Party, this was precisely the reason why Republican delegates chose him as their party’s candidate for the Presidency!
This is how true democracy works in a truly democratic party. Michael Falzon and his party still have to learn this.

Eddy Privitera
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