The return to the Opposition benches and the EU referendum

Your second stint as Opposition Leader started with an immediate reversal, by the new PN government, of your decisions regarding VAT, which was reintroduced and no longer remained an issue, and the reactivation of Malta's EU membership application. D

By: independent.com.mt

Aug 18 2024
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4356 Views

The return to the Opposition b

Clearly it was a huge blow. The work of years since 1992 but also previously was blown out of the water just when the ground work was progressing for a different way of doing things. There were moments when I did feel bitter but on the other hand, I thought (still do) that there was no other way of handling the situation honourably in full respect of the national interest and of how our democracy should run. But a (complete) collapse of my vision for Malta - no, that I did not see.

That Labour's political stance was greatly damaged - again that was obvious. We would no longer be underestimated (a plus factor up to 1996) and the PN back in government would sharpen its game, which it did. There was still time and space however for Labour to develop and project successfully the policies it stood for (a special relationship with the EU, modernisation and probity in the management of the country's institutions, social equality, neutrality...)

Alfred Sant addressing a press conference before the local council elections held in 2000

I'm sure that you were disappointed that Labour had returned to the Opposition benches after such a short time. But you had stayed on as leader, and nobody had questioned this, understanding that in the circumstances you had faced there had been no other option and you deserved another chance. After the 1998 election, with Mintoff now out of the way, did you believe that you still had the whole party behind you?

Having the whole party behind the leader is an illusion only believed and practised in places like North Korea. Post 1998, there would have been disgruntled voices within the party, unhappy with how things turned out. The important thing was to accept they still had a role to play, allow them the space within which to contribute and do their own thing while remaining watchful to ensure that the political game was played fairly in party structures.

A more crucial problem was to balance the tensions of the first difficult months following the elections within the party and not allow them to lead to some repudiation of the party's past achievements, so many of which were intimately linked to Mintoff's leadership. For instance, some party facilities which had been named for the former leader or had a commemorative plaque or whatever that named him tried to change the name or remove the plaque. When we got wind of this, the instruction we gave was to stop. It does not make sense for an organization to erase or revoke its history, especially when much in that history was highly progressive.

The Labour Party gathering for Freedom Day in 2003, days before the general election took place

The turn of the century brought with it the EU membership issue. Malta had been accepted as a member by the EU, along with another nine countries, but you still believed that the better idea was to have a special partnership with the EU, rather than membership. You had been adamant that Malta was too small (makku) and there were more drawbacks than benefits in full membership. Ultimately you lost that battle. What do you think were the reasons behind this (the government had more resources to promote the idea and you were fighting against it from the opposition? Were the people duped into thinking the EU would solve all of Malta's problems?)

The membership option was relentlessly promoted in highflown political terms (Malta would be part of "Europe" and by implication, would never be "Libyan" or "African"). Economic considerations were pushed as much as possible into the realm of the vague, the only exception being the claim that Malta would benefit from the allocation of very generous European funds. Both approaches, spurious as they were, were simple to articulate, were liked and difficult to rebut in a few words. The PN government made sure that all its communications resources were marshalled to get its message across. If today's complainants about the public imbalance in national broadcasting were around then, they would have noted how stronger they were being applied at that time, not least because they were much more subtle though all-pervasive.

The EU itself had evolved to become more hegemonic in intent. It wasn't "accepting" applicants, it heartily wanted them in (even if it was less than well prepared to absorb them effectively). So, the European Commission's diplomatic representative in Malta actively canvassed for Malta's membership. He actually lied to the nation when he declared that the option preferred by Labour (partnership) was a non-starter and inadmissible. Meanwhile from the Brussels end, negotiations were accelerated (and not just for Malta) with more sweeteners upfront even as the requirement was maintained that applicants had to first implement the EU acquis (its body of rules and regulations) before they entered. In Malta's case, the sweeteners took the form of greater financial allocations in an initial phase (as for agriculture) and vague but well calibrated declarations to placate the more politically dicey lobbies (such as hunters and trappers).

Between 1996 and 1998, the PN had adjusted its approach and now proposed to put the EU membership option to a referendum. It did this to placate a small internal faction (of Borg Olivier loyalists who feared that membership would negate Independence) and an equally small fraction of sceptics in the business community. But the greater majority of members inside the latter were dogmatically committed to membership, perhaps because they were mostly Nationalists (?), but not just.

So in the final referendum count down, we had firms calling an assembly of their employees to announce that if Malta did not join the EU, they would close down. One of the largest which did this promptly gave up the ghost soon after Malta did join. When as a Labour delegation we attended a consultation meeting organised by the Chamber of Commerce to discuss the membership option as negotiated by the government, we were prevented from distributing an MLP document which presented our alternative option. Frankly, I could only compare some business leaders to lemmings. They were vocal in their support of membership as negotiated by the government, while presiding over businesses - as in beverages, wine, beer, processed food, furniture and small scale retail, among others - that were bound to take a hit when the option was implemented.

To be sure, the referendum approach may have assuaged doubts within the PN's camp but it amounted to a manipulation. The EU had recognised this when it came to a settlement of Balkan problems in the wake of the collapse of Yugoslavia. There, it had insisted on the need of a majority of 55 per cent in favour of decisions relating to sovereignty issues. For enlargement, no such criterion was recognised since it was established (not unreasonably) that all applicants would be applying their national laws to ratify their accession.

From the Labour side we argued that the referendum approach would load the dice in favour of the government. It would just amount to a presentation of what the government had obtained through its negotiations while placing Labour in the position of having to criticise this without being able to project its own alternative. Rules applying to the running of a referendum would be much laxer and looser than for general elections. The calculation was that it would be fairer to have an election in which alternative government programmes could be contrasted in an electoral contest run under rules that had been tested and tried. Labour made it clear it would be bound by the people's decision one way or the other only following a general election. So in order to invalidate further the referendum approach, the advice given to those who did not support EU membership was to either vote no, or invalidate their vote or not vote at all.

Alfred Sant (right) taking part in a Federation of Industry debate on implications of EU membership with then Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami (left)

You had left the Birkirkara polling station showing your voting document, a clear sign that you had abstained in the referendum on EU membership, which during the campaign was one of the options that you had suggested people who were against accession should do. Later, when the results had shown that the majority of valid votes had been in favour of membership, you had argued that the partnership option had won. Wasn't that a desperate call and one that could have caused serious trouble?

There was nothing desperate about that call and followed directly and logically from what we had been arguing during our campaign as I just described. Our position was that the government could only claim to have won the referendum if it secured at least the absolute majority of all those entitled to vote. I was not the only one to have not voted in the referendum; in later years during many house visits, I would meet people who would proudly show me their referendum voting document.

In this, we were simply following the approach adopted by the PN under George Borg Olivier in the 1956 integration referendum, the holding of which the PN also contested at that time. It was not Labour's fault that our previous campaign messages were unheeded. Big efforts had been made by government and "independent" media sources to blank them out or make them sound unintelligible.

In the circumstances, given the huge imbalances in resources between the two sides in the campaign, the referendum result caused great alarm in Brussels; it was the lowest percentage of valid votes cast in favour of membership in the referenda (where they were held) of other applicant countries. Our argument that the issue needed to be settled in a general election was validated. It had to be called.

The PM of the time, Eddie Fenech Adami, had immediately called an election to back up the referendum vote, which he won too. The results of the referendum and election gave a strong indication that a sizeable chunk of Labour followers had voted in favour of membership and the PN in 2003. How did you deal with this?

There were switchers on the two sides, but of course the swing away from Labour was more significant. However quite a number of PN voters, some of them quite influential in their day, had switched. They tended to be of the old school, proud of Malta's independence or small businessmen. Some kept contact with me and when it was all over, one came to see and thank me, bringing with him as a gift an out of print edition of a Gladstone biography. However the die had been cast and as it had promised, Labour would accept that a decision had been taken by the people and this would not be contested.

Part 1: The 1981 election and the transition from Mintoff to KMB

Part 2: The 1980s’ bulk-buying system and public sector employment

Part 3: The Church schools battle and the 1987 constitutional amendments

Part 4: The post-1987 election years and the rise to the Labour leadership

Part 5: A new image, the anti-Vat position and the Cittadin Mobil

Part 6: The freezing os Malta's EU application and the VAT-CET changeover

Part 7: The clash with Mintoff and the collapse of the government in 1998

Next week: Malta's entry into the European Union and the last years as Opposition Leader