Prime Minister’s ‘special envoy’ lays into Malta’s cultural ambassador

The prime minister’s special envoy to the World Tourism Organisation, former Mintoffian minister Joe Grima, 80, has now laid into opera star Joseph Calleja for saying – in an interview with Malta Today yesterday – that the Maltese fear and hatred of immigrants is not so much racism as ignorance.

Incidentally, I think Calleja got that one wrong: racism is itself the fruit of ignorance. All forms of bigotry are. Where immigrants are concerned, many Maltese are racist and bigoted because they are ignorant.

The prime minister’s special envoy to the World Tourism Organisation is a prime example of that. His ignorance and bigotry are so great that his views have not changed since he sat in Mintoff’s cabinet in the 1970s.

Now that he is 80, you can’t expect any improvements.

Joseph Calleja is young enough to be his grandson and, unlike Grima, has since his early 20s had a career which takes him all over the world, mixing with people who couldn’t be more different to Lynne Zahra and Mintoff’s fossils. That sort of life forces your mind open. Grima’s mind is shut tight.