The electorate gave him an unassailable majority in Parliament. Franco, Gonzi’s thorn, says all is fine and wondrous with the Joseph Muscat government. It seemed as if the Prime Minister, in his most controversial act yet, was going to return the immigrants who landed here illegally—is it important if one comes in despair and does it legally or not?—to Libya.

Whether Dr Muscat was just flexing his muscles or not is immaterial. If he wants to act the bully let him, but not with the suffering people who have suffered enough to get here. Bullying the EU is horrid enough but using the people who have landed here illegally as pawns is worse than criminal. He promised a new way of politics and we have got it in xenophobia unlimited, in brattish, brutish words and blunders. He promised inclusivity and he is making a mockery of all we, as a nation, should cherish—hospitality to all, especially the downtrodden.

Gone is his smile, gone is his loving endearing youthful nature. Now we are back to bully tactics. And the super-Joseph feeling is there all over—he has, after all, a majority of over 36000 and he can taunt, sneer and poke everlasting fun at the poor PN and their broken-down, bankrupt organisation.

But what he is doing with his push-back slogans and bullying tactics is giving vent to other extreme feelings of all racists amongst us. He will have to carry the can for all actions of Norman Lowell-type hotheads who will now know they have a racist for a prime minister. Or if not a racist, he is a man who orders unacceptable, reprehensible and illegal acts against refugees and who is only suppressed by a legal injunction.

That this has happened and is happening in 2013 by a movement that supposedly embraced everyone—the weak, the marginalised, the poor, the suffering—is way beyond acceptance. The PM is causing damage to our country, something he will surely regret. Undoubtedly, this has been one of the worst moments in Malta’s history.