Romulus’ anti-establishment prologue

If 2016 was the year the world, as we know it, turned on its head, nothing indicates that 2017 will be any different. Even tiny Malta, now entrusted with the leadership of the largest economy in the world, with a GDP per head of €25,000 for its 500 million consumers, is experiencing political summersaults by its leaders.

Donald Trump’s flirt with Vladimir Putin and Britain’s divorce with the EU may be the blockbusters of this global anti-establishment sentiment, but every nation has its own share of suspense provided by political actors who are struggling for attention from a disenchanted and disenfranchised electorate. So when Jean Claude Junker’s EU Commission came to town and filed into Renzo Piano’s masterpiece for the ceremonial kick-start of Malta’s long awaited dream to lead the old continent from its periphery, the leader of the Opposition and Nationalist Party Leader Simon Busuttil pounced on the opportunity to give pundits his little contribution to the revolution. Malta is disappointed with your actions, he told the Commission, for not speaking the truth and

Editor’s pick

for embracing a Government riddled with corruption allegations to the point that he who will be entrusted with the EU’s energy portfolio for the next six months holds secret companies in Panama and declared to be able to deposit millions from commissions while in public office.

Of course Simon Busuttil was spot on in his delivery and choice of occasion. It felt like his speech was written none other than by Alfred Sant himself, who continues to criticise the EU project till this very day from within the lucrative European Parliament. Would anyone have expected THE Simon Busuttil, Romulus of the EU, to wipe the floor with his EPP led EU Commission right in front of a defiant Joseph Muscat who after battling anything European and after embracing, adopting and rehabilitating Malta’s disgraced EU Commissioner now rubs shoulders with Junker?

What motive did Simon Busuttil have to lash out at the EU Commission in that manner? Was it frustration at an EU numb in front of a sovereign nation’s free will to seek closer ties with China and the likes of it, adamant in protecting its people’s cruel hobbies and consciously lowering the standards of good governance just to mention a few? Or was it realisation by the Leader of the Opposition that the EU his party painted to all and sundry is not what it really is?

Maybe Busuttil succumbed to the possibility that Muscat’s Labour of sorts has successfully adopted the cold logic that all that really matters nowadays with the EU is that it is the world’s largest trading block and that it is the world’s largest trader of manufactured goods and services besides being the top trading partner for 80 countries.

The rest is glossary and rhetoric that ran awash over the past few years as nationalism raised its head.

Simon Busuttil’s outcry the other day wasn’t as much a drubbing to the EU as much as it was a message to his fold that the romantic image of the EU portrayed by him and his predecessors is obsolete and in today’s world the PN is set to shift gear and start calling the goddess for what it has become.

Welcome to Simon’s anti-establishment prologue.