Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/260953
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 16 FEBRUARY 2014 Opinion 20 I t's coming to that time of year again, when mailboxes all over the country have their every orifice stuffed with as many unasked-for brochures, leaf lets and coupons that can possibly fit – and a few more for good measure – with the remainder thrust unceremoniously under your door, jammed through the Persjani, or even parachuted down the chimney. OK, I know what you're thinking. That's what happens all the year round. Every day, without fail, and normally to the tune of 'Hawn Tad-Doughnuts'. This very morning I emptied my mailbox and it reminded me of the TARDIS from Doctor Who. Bigger on the inside than the outside (or "dimensionally transcendental ", for those who have a sonic screwdriver instead of a brain). I had to call bulky refuse, and even they refused to believe the bulk. So why should the coming weeks and months be any different from, oh, any other time of year? Ah yes, of course. The European Parliament Election. And even at this early stage, three months before the event, there have already been more reported sightings than usual of that otherwise rarely seen (and in some cases never-heard-of ) creature, the MEP candidate. You might have spotted one or two (or 16 or 20) of them yourselves, interviewed in the press or quoted on the news. And while you may ever see the same candidate again after that news story – some of them have this curious ability to simply vanish in the twinkling of an eye, normally a few seconds after their last known Facebook status update – it doesn't really matter, because more will always emerge to take their place. And they all seem to think it's terribly important that we drop everything at once and listen to what they have to say. I myself have lost count of the number of invitations to coffee mornings with this or that candidate: which, given that I drink around 17 cups of coffee in an average day any way, gives me the convenient excuse that I'm trying to avoid an early midlife heart attack. But if you actually want to listen, there is no shortage of opportunities. It is now possible to converse with an aspiring MEP in the comfort of your own home, by means of a holocommunicator hooked up to the party headquarters. Just click the link, and a 3D, 3-inch hologram of the selected candidate will beam out of your computer monitor onto your desktop, repeating random messages like: "These are dark times for the Republic… you're the only one who can help us… Here, take these droids…" In the case of Kevin Plumpton's hologram, I am told you can even hear some bonus background voices: "He is part of the rebel alliance! Set your blasters to 'stun'…" But I was reminded of the TARDIS in more ways than one. Reading through some of the preliminary interviews and articles was distinctly like hurtling backwards through the Space-Time Continuum in a bright blue London Police Box. It took me right back to the 2009 campaign… paused to admire the view… then carried on spinning all the way back to the 2005 one before. And it works forwards, too. Take the next MEP election in June 2014. You can already predict what most (admittedly not all) candidates will say under any given circumstance: starting with the messages on the leaf lets that will soon be f looding into your homes from every conceivable angle. They will start out by outlining why it is more important than ever to have a dependable voice in the European Parliament precisely now (and with variations, "precisely now" will be a "time of opportunity and challenges", a "time to be innovative and take courageous decisions", a "time to defend the national interest from new and darker connivances"… take your pick). But it is not enough to be represented in the European Parliament by any old buffoon. Oh no. The candidate who sent you the leaf let will patiently explain why it is vitally important that you vote for his or her particular brand of buffoonery, which is automatically superior to every other candidate's… and though they won't specif y it in as many words, that includes other candidates from their own party, too. What follows is normally a more detailed explanation of precisely why they themselves are better suited to the task of representing YOUR specific needs than anyone else (because of course they all intuitively know your every private concern, and will somehow happily make a commitment to represent them all at European level: while simultaneously representing all other conceivable concerns on all other topics, too). Here is admittedly where the messages start to differ slightly, but in the end the mantra has always been the same. Malta has the smallest representation in the European Union, so it is important to elect the strongest voice possible from among the available options: so that YOU will be better represented, YOUR COUNTRY'S interests will be better served, and YOU will no longer have to worry about a thing… snug in the knowledge that Big Daddy (or Mummy) MEP is competently handling everything on your behalf from dark, rainy and mysterious Brussels. And so on. It was exactly the same in 2009, incidentally. And in 2005. All the way down to the reminder that "precisely now" (or "then", to be more precise) was the most important time you will ever be called upon to cast your vote. And this, too, has a vaguely Doctor Who-like qualit y to it. You start wondering whether these people are inhabiting the same dimension as you; or if they somehow got stuck in a time-warp, and were never able to move beyond the rhetoric of the first-ever European election campaign. Yet things have changed slightly in the meantime. We've all seen European institutions in action since then; and while we still occasionally get them muddled up, we've all got a slightly better understanding of roughly how the European Union is actually cobbled together. As for "precisely now"; well, that to me is a time immediately after one of the clearest examples of how and to what effect the European parliament actually operates: both in its totalit y, and in the way individual MEPs actually use their the strength of their voice to defend OUR interests. Our recent entanglement with both the EP and the European Commission over the sale of passports was certainly an eye- opener, for those who bought into the "importance of a strong voice" argument. I won't go into the details of the debate itself, but the net result was a strongly- worded (and very humiliating) condemnation of Malta by a clobbering 90% of the European Parliament. The resolution called on the European Commission to "take action" to avert the degrading phenomenon of member states selling their nationalit y on the open market; and after a volley of similar condemnation from the Commission… hey presto! One meeting and one minor amendment later, and the same Commission gives its blessing to "Grand Sale Maltese Passport Mk 2"… which of course gets under way as planned, leaving the EP resolution f luttering rather untidily on the sidelines. I think that puts the issue of "strong voices in the EP" into some kind of perspective. In practical terms, the upshot of all that hullaballoo was an official endorsement of a programme which changed only in the detail, but not in the overall principle. Effectively, the resolution had no effect whatsoever. And it was near-unanimously approved. And this is significant for two reasons. One, we all got to hear the full extent of the vocal range of the two sitting Nationalist Part y's MEPs, who ably illustrated that they were far better than their Labour counterparts at working the complex ropes of the European Parliament, even from a minorit y position. In fact, they very expertly managed to orchestrate Raphael Vassallo YOUR FIRST CLICK OF THE DAY www.maltatoday.com.mt Strong voices in Europe You could argue that it backfired enormously, as the IIP scheme is now legally unassailable, and the PN have been left standing with an obsolete judicial protest in hand