The prime minister has worked out that it is more opportune to appear concerned

Published: April 22, 2015 at 10:20am
Running Commentary, August 2013

Running Commentary, August 2013

Running Commentary, July 2013

Running Commentary, July 2013

Two years ago, the prime minister stood side by side with his Police and Army Minister, Manuel Mallia, and threatened ‘Europe’ on the subject of migration.

We are not going to stand for this, he said, and we are going to start pushing back any migrants who get here. The two of them decided to make an example of the wretched individuals who had just landed, instructing Air Malta and the Army to stand by for pushbacks, and speaking of the migrants themselves as though they were animals.

When asked why he was doing it, given that they faced almost certain death and torture on their return, Manuel Mallia said that we shouldn’t concern ourselves about that because he and the prime minister were only going to repatriate the “healthy men”.

He didn’t seem to understand that this was even more shocking: separating the men from their families and selecting them for repatriation on the basis of their ability to physically withstand the horrors they faced.

A large group of lawyers filed a judicial protest against the government on this matter, on the basis that the government was breaking the very law it was in duty bound to uphold.

Human rights lawyers then obtained an injunction against the government from the European Court of Human Rights.

Joseph Muscat and Manuel Mallia were prevented from pushing back those migrants, but they continued in much the same vein, chiming with the racist Zeitgeist and stirring up a frenzy which led to the Facebook page of the European Commissioner for immigration (a woman) being flooded with vulgar, savage and totally uncivilised violen, abusive and pornographic insults from Maltese followers of Joseph.

It was in this context, perhaps you have forgotten, that the prime minister used the expression ‘Europe must wake up and smell the coffee’.

Now Manuel Mallia is gone and not in a position to impose his Italianate fascist views on the country. And the prime minister, whose primary consideration is himself and how he comes across, has the nous to understand that shouting about smelling the coffee and threatening Europe with pushbacks and saying that Malta can’t take anymore would go down very badly indeed in the context of an enormous tragedy in which thousands are dying and many hundreds drowned only a few days ago.

So now he is pretending concern. But would he have taken the same stance had the migrants survived and been landed in Malta? No, he would not. He would be shrieking about smelling the coffee and issuing threats.

It is easy to pretend concern about drowned migrants because they are dead and out of the equation, and so not his problem.

Isn’t it curious, though, how Malta doesn’t seem to have rescued any migrants for a fairly long while, even though crossings have increased dramatically?

Muscat has understood that pretending sympathy now gets him greater attention than anger and pushbacks, and anyway, the migrants are dead, so he doesn’t have to pander to the ‘don’t eat lampuki, jaqq’ brigade.