Earlier this week, Alex Borg made some political discourses at the Floriana Granaries where preparations are being laid out for the Nationalist Party’s celebrations of Malta’s Independence anniversary. Among the things that he said there were two important items which I think need to be pointed out.
First of all, Alex Borg is making the proposal to introduce compulsory Maltese certification for third-country nationals to be promoted to higher grades in jobs such as nursing and home-care. This is a proposal which I have been banging on about for some time and it’s the logical conclusion for any policy maker who is concerned about Malta’s demographics. Malta can increase its demographic and language-footprint nor only by increasing the birth0rate but also by promoting our language. It is shameful that the Labour government is sleeping on this proposal.
The other point which is also very important to highlight is Alex Borg’s response when questioned about Malta’s neutrality. His answer highlighted his incompetence – something which, I have been discussing regularly. Alex Borg said that he wants to uphold Malta’s neutrality because that is what “our forefathers believed in”. The concept of neutrality was promoted and introduced into Malta’s foreign policy by the Labour Party ion the 1970s as it joined the Non-Aligned Movement. George Borg Olivier was pro-NATO and wanted Malta to get closer to NATO.
Alex Borg lacks a basic knowledge about Maltese history and his ignorance reflects in the way he speaks about foreign policy. He’s also probably very ignorant on foreign policy in general and this is something he needs to grasp by doing a lot of reading. This is not something encouraging for a prospective Prime Minister, and these are also the same arguments I made against Robert Abela when he first placed his bid to become the Labour Party leader.
What’s funny about this is that Alex Borg literally praised Dom Mintoff’s foreign policy (unwittingly) – neutrality was not the PN’s making even if they voted in favour of it in the constitutional reforms that were passed before the 1987 elections in order to modify the electoral laws. PN’s main priority back then was to ensure the right constitutional changes to prevent another dictatorship. There wasn’t even a proper discussion about neutrality in the 1980s between political parties as the Opposition’s concerns were more addressed to the ongoing and multiple crises of those times.
Alex Borg is making strides against the Labour Party but it terrifies me to know that someone who has no idea about what’s going on around the world and without a basic knowledge of his country’s history, may very well become Prime Minister.
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