It is heart-warming to see that there has been a shift in the attitude of the Prime Minister and that of many people when it comes to the plight of migrants fleeing war and strife. It may be due to the horrific dimensions of the tragedy at sea or the recognition that there will only be more deaths in the offing or the soul-destroying image of a drowned toddler; whatever the reason, the pendulum of public feeling has swung towards the side of humanity.
Coupled with this feeling is the frantic search for a solution and for an easily definable villain to blame for the migration crisis. At the moment the EU institutions head the list of ineffectual idiots which we can rail against.
Yes it’s easy to blame the Brussels bureaucrats for being a talking shop and not getting their act together. But then these are the same people who throw €114 million down the drain every year because they can’t decide where to hold all the sittings of the European Parliament. There’s not much chance that they will get to grips with a problem of this magnitude.
More to the point, no approach is going to be a cure-all. Even if the EU powers-that-be had to decide upon a bombing of people-trafficking industries or boots-on-the-ground strategy, this will necessarily involve loss of life of military personnel and the use of resources. I don’t know how popular such measures would be.
Pushbacks will have the same effect as not doing anything – more deaths at sea. Even opening a humanitarian corridor and introducing mandatory burden-sharing is not without its disadvantages. Security would become a major issue, as would be the fact that it would be an incentive for people-smuggling rings to enrich themselves further by infiltrating the legal transport system.
We have to admit that there is no end in sight. That is the first step towards a realistic appraisal of the situation and a rational consideration of the (limited) options available.
• A judgment handed down last week has raised eyebrows. A young woman has sued her estranged father for damages, claiming that his abuse over the years had led her to have low self-esteem and has hindered her ability to pursue her studies at University and to qualify as an accountant. Her parents had a terribly conflicted and stormy relationship and separated when she was 11, at which point she went to live exclusively with her mother, with her father being given the right of access for three hours a week.
Opening a humanitarian corridor and introducing mandatory burden-sharing is not without its disadvantages
From the judgment it is not clear whether this right of access was actually exercised and for how long, as the woman did say that she enjoyed these post-separation visits where her father would narrate stories to his children and give them whatever they wanted. In any case, daughter and father do not seem to be on speaking terms.
At present the woman is a care worker. She wishes to become a primary school teacher, but according to a witness she has not yet obtained the necessary pass mark in her Maltese O-level examination.
The woman seems to have based her case entirely on the loss of potential earnings as a fully-qualified accountant. She projected that she would be earning €35,000 had she qualified as an accountant, deducted her actual pay as a care worker and multiplied this by the number of years spent working until retirement age and came up with a grand total of €700,812.
The court rejected this figure but came to the conclusion that had she graduated she would be earning some €23,000 a year. This was multiplied by the eight per cent disability estimate given by the court-appointed experts. The court finally decreed that the father should pay his daughter the sum of €82,984 by way of damages.
The judgment has not yet been confirmed in appeal, but if it is it would have set a very odd precedent. In the first place, it would open the floodgates of litigation for all wannabe accountants, lawyers, investment bankers, architects and scientists who hadn’t made the grade to sue their parents for loss of potential earnings. They might even go on to blame their parents for their failure to become the next Cristiano Ronaldo. Never mind that they may not have the talent, the intelligence or the mere staying power to graduate as professionals they can always blame it on their parents.
This sort of judgment would encourage warring parents to instigate their children to institute proceedings against their estranged spouse to wring him or her dry – exposing the sad and ugly divisions within the family, as it has in this particular case.
The judgment makes for extremely depressing reading, not only for the inexplicable way the courts has reached its conclusion but for revealing the rifts and character flaws of those involved.
cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt