Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1294561
15 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 4 OCTOBER 2020 NEWS movement, he was still hoping for a visit to the White House, with US ambassador Bruce Laingen at the time noting that "a well-timed and well-coordinated invitation to visit Washington could pay worthwhile dividends in influencing a man who is both conscious of slights and enormously sus- ceptible to attentions paid him." The anti-EU crusade Anti-colonial sentiments still ran through the veins of the party led by Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici in 1984. After being sent back in opposition in 1987, it still followed the lead of dockyard workers who blocked the entrance to the grand harbour to stop the HMS Ark Royal from entering, in a major show of force which saw the aircraft carrier rerouted to St Paul's Bay. It was the Nationalist Party which rea- ligned Malta's foreign policy, shifting to closer relations with the West, which in 1995 led to Malta signing a NATO PfP agreement and commencing negotiations to join the European Economic Commu- nity. It still kept the hallmarks of Mintoff's foreign policy, notably constitutional neu- trality and friendship with Arab states: af- ter all, this was what had been brokered in the crucial electoral and neutrality amend- ments of the 1986 Constitution between Mintoff and the PN's shadow foreign min- ister Guido de Marco, himself a vocal sup- porter of the Palestinian cause. Upon being re-elected to power in 1996, Alfred Sant immediately withdrew Malta from the PfP while "freezing" Malta's EU membership application. But the downfall of Sant's government, accused by the patri- archal backbencher Mintoff of succumb- ing to "American interests" by privatising the Cottonera shoreline to accommodate a yacht marina, prompted the return of the PN in 1998. Here began the reactivation of the EU membership bid, which the Labour party opposed from a sovereignist position. But here Labour was opposing the sharing of sovereignty between equal member states, rather than then a loss of sovereignty. Access to the single market and free move- ment in the EU has however enhanced the value of both Maltese citizenship and its fi- nancial services industry, a fact of life for Labour's economic vision today. But this also came at the cost of increased scrutiny from the European Commission on Malta's more insalubrious problems, which has al- lowed Labour to re-invent sovereignism as a defence of Malta's turf in the face of in- trusions by pesky MEPs and foreign critics. Muscat under the spotlight While under Joseph Muscat the party still paid homage to Mintoff's legacy, anti-co- lonialism was no longer the fashion within the Labour Party. After 2013 Malta was gripped by the fe- ver of an economic growth which thrived in its role as a service hub for the global economy, including its dark side of shell companies, corrupt dealings and the sale of passports. Ironically it was in defending Malta's turf on this slippery slope that Muscat found himself re-evoking the party's sovereignism against scrutiny by MEPs and internation- al bodies like the Council of Europe, which intensified after the assassination of Daph- ne Caruana Galizia. Against this backdrop, Malta fostered a friendly relationship with the USA which enhanced the new government's pro-west- ern 'respectability' and also affirmed by an- tagonism towards Vladimir Putin's Russia. But it was fatally undermined by the assas- sination of Caruana Galizia, which threw a spotlight on Malta's darkest secrets. Unlike Sant, Muscat did not withdraw from the PfP, an agreement controversially reactivated by Richard Cachia Caruana by the PN in 2008. But with veteran George Vella anchored in the foreign ministry, it also remained clear that Malta was still stuck to its red lines on SOFA, kept intact by previous Nationalist administrations de- spite their pro-Western orientation. Under the spotlight The reputational damage from the Caru- ana Galizia assassination may well have rendered the country more vulnerable to outside pressure, something which added a new twist to the SOFA plot while strength- ening the case for enhanced cooperation with the US in tackling organised crime and oil smuggling. While signing a SOFA may just represent a pragmatic step to bolster cooperation with an influential world power which has similar agreements with over 100 nations, more than an epochal realignment, the vulnerability of Malta's position brought about by its poor governance, raises ques- tions on whether it is being bullied by a big power in a moment of weakness. For unlike Mintoff's brinkmanship which saw him ex- tracting money from the West so as not to switch to the other side, in this case Malta lacks any bargaining chips. It remains to be seen whether its vulnerability will make it more disposed to give even more leeway to US military interests, including more fre- quent visit by military vessels in its ports and dockyards, which could be facilitated by any exemption for US military personnel from local justice. For as post-Second World War history shows, US imperial appetite often grows as it eats. And for Malta, the allure of spending by military personnel may offer short-cuts in the post-COVID recovery period, but at the cost of a lurch to the pre-1979 past, when Malta's economy was dependent on British military spending, thus reversing Dom Mintoff's greatest achievement. The pragmatist template: while Mintoff's anti- colonial rhetoric served as the dominant genesis of post-Boffa politics, Labour was pragmatist in its sovereignist politics. Still under Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, Labour backed dockyard strikers who prevented the HMS Ark Royal from entering the dockyard; Alfred Sant was educated in the States, while Joseph Muscat began life as PM of an EU member state who viewed American dominance as a fact of political life The reputational damage from the Caruana Galizia assassination may well have rendered the country more vulnerable to outside pressure, something which added a new twist to the SOFA plot while strengthening the case for enhanced cooperation with the US in tackling organised crime and oil smuggling Robert Abela meets US Secretary for Defence Mark Esper, in a meeting that took place against the background of speculation about a SOFA deal with the Americans