Racism is fuelled by fear and fear is one of the easiest things to foment. Last week brought out the worst in us but also the best in us.
The racists were out in force and even though the worst of them constituted only a fraction of our population I fear that there is somewhere a silent majority that tacitly approves. This is the most worrying aspect of the problem.
Put your minds back when Malta was sandwiched between an aggressive Italy led by Silvio Berlusconi and a repressed Libya led by the late maverick Muammar Gaddafi. They threw money at the problem or, rather, Berlusconi did and for a couple of years we forgot all about the immigrants.
Despite the fact that the truth about what the Libyans were doing to the immigrants, horror stories that compare with the Nazi atrocities, we all chose to close an eye and practise the time-honoured out of sight out of mind policy with our then Nationalist government endorsing publicly Berlusconi’s solution. Not only did we endorse it but so did the EU.
Then Gaddafi was overthrown and killed. Berlusconi was toppled. The immigrant stream started again and escalated to the invasion we are facing now. The Prime Minister took the bull by the horns and threatened to push-back a group of Somalians, thereby triggering a storm of controversy about which enough has been written already in the press and the social media to bore you with by repeating now. The upshot was that, within hours, the reaction was astounding and we saw things developing before our very eyes that hitherto had been deemed impossible.
EU President Herman Van Rompuy met the Libyan Deputy Prime Minister, Sadiq Abdulrahman, in an unscheduled surprise meeting at Castile, a hat-trick that was pulled off by a Prime Minister with brains, guts and staying power.
Although the unofficial government opponents remained vociferous in their criticism, at times unnecessarily vitriolic, the official Nationalist Party line was, at least during Van Rompuy’s visit, most reasonable and conciliatory. And how can it not be if the results of the government’s actions, albeit controversial, speak for themselves? A couple of months after Simon Busuttil was elected as MEP, I was present for his maiden speech in Brussels. That was some time ago and, yet, it dealt with the problem of immigration, illegal, as it was called then. We have had since then lots of talk and no action.
The previous government capitalised on every positive development no matter how small to keep the people calm. I distinctly remember the hoo-hah at the airport one day when five immigrants were being sent to America. There was possibly as much press coverage as for Van Rompuy’s visit. Ridiculous, you might say, but so necessary to maintain the equilibrium.
I fear there is a silent majority which tacitly approves
What has resulted could be the beginning of a long-awaited solution. What Prime Minister Joseph Muscat did was cut the Gordian Knot when his predecessors merely tried to figure it out. If the EU sticks to its resolve to address the Libyan problem directly then, yes, we have a hope that things will improve.
I am fine with that as long as there is no repetition of the cold blooded murders that took place only a couple of years ago when the hapless immigrants were sent in sealed trucks to the middle of the Libyan desert or, later on, brutally used as cannon fodder by Gaddafi in the conflict that eventually cost him his life.
It is about time that the EU realised that its common borders reach far down into the Mediterranean, south of Tunisia, not just through Malta but also because Italy, because of Pantelleria and Lampedusa, just borders Tunisia and Libya.
You cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs and, yes, there were instances during last week’s saga that upset me enormously. Yet, in retrospect I realise how right the Prime Minister was. The timing was perfection itself.
The Pope had just visited Lampedusa, not in a black shirt spouting racist rhetoric like the Cavaliere but as a humble pilgrim asking forgiveness for all those lives lost in the crossfire between European selfishness and African desperation.
The Prime Minister’s threat to push-back could not have had greater impact and, yet, it was nothing strange or new. The Nationalist government had done it before with a group of Eritreans who were consequently nearly all exterminated. Was that morally right? Of course, not. Yet, at that time, the NGOs didn’t manage to procure a stop order from the European Court of Human Rights did they?
Where were the NGOs and the 60-something lawyers when I had written, repeatedly, about the tragic realities and consequences of the Berlusconi-Gaddafi agreement? It just proved that ‘out of sight out of mind’ is a reality that still holds water despite the fact that, today, because of IT, very little is out of sight and it is probably the overburdening of our minds with information that places things out of mind.
It is now time to bury hatchets and pull the same rope. This is a very serious national issue that is not to be politicised. Too long have we Maltese been prone to getting tennis-necks as government and opposition use every little excuse to get at each other, obfuscating every issue with meaningless political rhetoric.
Muscat promised to be different. That is what got him a 36,000 vote majority. This issue was a litmus test. The fact that the Leader of the Opposition, in not so many words, is advocating the same solution as proposed by the Prime Minister is in itself indicative that Maltese politics will perhaps finally mature into something that we can all live with.