The national interest and the common good

Italian junior minister Stefano Salia has confirmed that strong-arm tactics in international relations does not work, especially for Malta.

Let’s start with Labour's obsession with the national interest in matters related to immigration and foreign policy. Labour leader Joseph Muscat lauded Italy’s right wing government for its “strong attitude, a position in favour of its national interest,” ignoring the fact that this position infringes on Malta’s national interest.  For that is what you get when everyone invokes the nationalist interest, an anarchy in which the strongest nations prevail on the weaker ones. Our long term interest is best serve by the pain staking process of creating a system of rules not by Italy's rude diplomacy.

“Malta shouldn’t be wary about taking a strong attitude in favour of the national interest. The national interests comes first and before anything else,” Muscat was reported saying. I ask:  does the national interest come before human rights? History is full of examples of cases where demagogues used the national interest as an excuse for policies which had tragic consequences. Am sure Muscat does not belong to that category but his ambiguity may well legitimize such positions or fuel such expectations.

Is Labour advocating a foreign policy inspired by no other value than national self interest? Doesn't Labour have any red lines when it comes to the fundamental right for asylum for people coming from hellish places like Libya or Somalia?

I am all for “responsibility sharing” but the greatest enemies of this concept are those who put the national interest before anything else. If everyone takes this position, there will never be any such mechanism in place. Due to our geographic position, this is the only long term solution to our problems. That said, we must accept the reality that some migrants are here to stay and that immigration is something we have to learn to serenely live with it.

Secondly Muscat is mistaken in comparing the predicament of African asylum seekers coming to Malta from Libya with Tunisian economic migrants arriving in Lampedusa. While the latter can be sent back if their country is a safe place of origin, the former have a right for protection. So Italy giving "protection" to Tunisians has nothing to do with the fate of asylum seekers from Libya.

I also find it baffling that a progressive party does not even attempt to explain the predicament from the hell created by a regime which the Labour Party has not condemned.

Equally repulsive is the PN's obsession with the common good on issues like divorce. For while I fully subscribe to the idea of a common good with regards to environmental issues and social justice, this idea becomes dangerous when applied to matters of personal choices and morality.

It amounts to nothing more than the imposition of values on people who deviate from what increasingly looks like a totalitarian ideology which is being applied not just to divorce but also to host of other issues including freedom of expression and gay and transgender rights. We risk having people like big brother Edwin Vassallo coming up with all sort of bright ideas on policing our life from cradle to grave. This why I believe a “yes” victory in the forthcoming referendum is vital for our democracy.

I much fear that a “no” victory will herald an unarrestable clampdown of civil rights and a drift to authoritarianism disguised as a defense of a common good which clearly does not include people like me in its definition.

Those pseudo liberals calling for abstention in the forthcoming referendum are intentionally or non intentionally conniving in this design.  I don’t give a damn if Muscat or Gonzi benefit from the result. Too much is at stake for such petty considerations.  Those making such calculations are either stupid or diabolical.