Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/773562
25 maltatoday, SUNDAY, 15 JANUARY 2017 Opinion reform... so any claim it might have to respect and cherish 'European values' is clearly out of the window. No, the PL is only in it for one thing (actually, two): the EU's big boobies. But this is a plot-twist that has already been revealed. The PN, on the other hand, is beginning to perceive the existence of political price only now. Having spent two decades patiently linking any form of anti-EU sentiment as a symptom of 'unelectability'... bandying about the 'Eurosceptic' label as though it were an instant ticket to ridicule... forging an identity that was so synonymous with the EU, that anyone would think they were conjoined twins... oh dear, oh dear. Suddenly, it is accusing the EU of being complicit in corruption. Of disappointing the Maltese people (which, somehow, the PN is suddenly qualified to represent) for failing to reflect the bias currently favoured by the Nationalist Party. There is, of course, a delicious irony in all this. Simon Busuttil is perfectly right, for reasons alluded to in the above dialogue. Of course the European Commission approved the financing of that power station, and did not criticise Muscat over the Panama Papers scandal. Juncker is painfully aware that his own chequered history on the issue of tax evasion automatically disqualifies him as a commentator. Anything he says will be interpreted in the context of the Luxleaks scandal... and more recently it has been suggested that he resisted tax evasion legislation at EU-wide level. There are even calls for his resignation as we speak. So instead, we got the formulaic answer Busuttil should have expected: seeing as he, of all people should know how the Commission functions. 'We do not enter the merits of national competency' (or words to that effect). Hence the tragic denouement... unlike Muscat, whose romance with the EU fizzled into an entirely ordinary marital squabble, Busuttil's love affair threatens to end in devastating heartbreak for himself. His complaint can be summed up as: [sobbing] ' But... but... how could you??' It was the devastated plea of a spurned lover, more than the cynical jibe of a jaded rogue. How will this pan out in the end? Does it mark the beginning of a complete reversal (the opposite of Labour's), whereby an ever- more bitter PN vows to wreak an Almodovar-style 'venganza' on the lover who so disdainfully repulsed it? Or will Busuttil finally settle into a more pragmatic, less lofty view of the European Commission... and resign himself to the fact that it does not exist merely to supply his party with endless ammunition against Labour? I don't know, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to miss the ending to a film like that. Such a shame it still has to be made... Of course, it's all Juncker's fault. Damn it, why doesn't he just stick to the script? The EU is the PN's lover, not Labour's. It says so, right there on the first page