What principles dear Alex and Daniel?

Alex Agius Saliba and Daniel Attard had every right not to vote for Roberta Metsola to become the European Parliament president once again. 

The two MEPs had no obligation to vote for her simply because she is Maltese if they were so strongly against her beliefs. 

But just as the two MEPs had every right to act as they did, we have every right to scrutinise and criticise their actions. 

Agius Saliba and Attard said they abstained from the vote because they wanted to be consistent with their principles as expressed during the election campaign. The principles at stake appear to be Metsola’s weak stand on the Gaza massacre being perpetrated by Israel, and her very strong pro-Ukraine stand that advocates providing military support to enable the country fight back against the Russian invasion. 

Based on these principles, it would be interesting to know whether the two MEPs voted in favour of Ursula von der Leyen’s second term as European Commission president. If anything, Von der Leyen had adopted a stance that was far more aloof from the Palestinian cause than Metsola’s. 

Now, if Agius Saliba and Attard truly want us to believe that Metsola’s stand in relation to the Middle East is what really motivated them to abstain they can go that one step further and badger the Maltese government to take the brave step of formally recognising the Palestinian State. Despite making such a pledge earlier this year, Malta was not part of the small grouping of EU member states that recognised Palestine a couple of months ago. 

The big irony in the rhetoric adopted by Agius Saliba and Attard is that while they believed they were doing their country and their conscious a favour by abstaining on Metsola ‘the warmonger’, the Maltese government has since May this year stationed two military personnel in the headquarters of the EU’s Red Sea maritime mission, Operation Aspides, to prevent attacks on merchant ships. 

We have absolutely no qualms over Malta’s participation in Operation Aspides. Indeed, we believe the country should have done more by embedding a military contingent on one of the participating ships from other European countries. It is the right thing to do. 

But this is where the principles cited by Agius Saliba and Attard get suddenly muddled. 

Taken at face value, their stand is one that appeals to a diminishing Labour hardcore enamoured to an idea of neutrality that is not only defunct but dysfunctional. 

They have every right to stick to this notion but this leader suspects there is much more to their abstention than they have let on in public. 

It beggars belief that Agius Saliba and Attard chose to abstain because of this disagreement with Metsola but had no qualms appearing alongside Joseph Muscat and coming to his complete defence despite the very serious crimes he is being accused of. 

And we do not cite the Muscat incident casually. The truth is that the Labour Party’s narrative over the past six months has been so confused that it has not only confounded voters but even its own MEPs. 

The PL’s narrative was conditioned by its former leader and the all-out attack on Metsola by trying to depict her as a ruthless warmonger and a killer of Palestinian children (descriptions far removed from reality) was simply a way of rebuffing the only person who could upstage Muscat. 

Agius Saliba and Attard played ball with the narrative dictated by Muscat, taking it one step further and engaging in an act of open defiance towards Prime Minister Robert Abela. 

The Prime Minister had said he will support Metsola’s re-election despite his differences with her. Abela based his argument on Labour’s long held belief that in the national interest it should support any Maltese candidate proposed for a top job in the EU. While there is merit in this stand, given the smallness of the country and greater difficulty it is to have nationals occupy positions of influence, it may not always be the right thing to do. 

But when two of Labour’s three MEPs decide off their own accord to ditch their own party’s long held belief the situation becomes a bit more complicated. 

The truth is that Agius Saliba’s and Attard’s abstention is symptomatic of the lack of cohesion in the Labour Party and the growing friction between different factions. 

They simply exported their party’s internal battles to the hemicycle in Strasbourg. The sullen face of Alex Agius Saliba as fellow MEPs applauded Metsola’s spectacular success will forever remain etched in the annals of European Parliament folklore. 

It will not be remembered as a principled stand but the petty action of a Maltese man who could not bring himself to support a fellow Maltese candidate for a post that 90% of MEPs believe she fulfilled with flying colours. It’s a shame.