It’s wonderful that someone like Joe Grima, the government’s so-called special envoy to the World Tourism Organisation, feels he is able to express himself as he sees fit. Especially because he actively formed part of a regime in Malta’s dark days that sought to stop people saying what they thought and did its best to control the media.
Eddie Fenech Adami recounts an unsavoury incident in his autobiography where he had to remind Mr Grima that he had assaulted a Broadcasting Authority employee when the latter turned up at a press conference in Germany to heckle the then Opposition leader. His title then, irony of ironies, was special envoy too.
These days he does not have that kind of weight to throw around, so he resorts to insults on Facebook.
According to him, “Malta’s President has consigned her Presidency to absolute and total irrelevance when she speaks about immigration and integration of the Maltese with African and Eastern European immigrants”.
He also launched a tirade against Joseph Calleja after the tenor said – quite rightly – that any Maltese who derived pleasure from migrant drownings were ignorant.
According to Mr Grima, this was evidence of a superiority complex – when the only superiority complex in evidence here is Mr Grima’s intolerance at living with those who happen to have skin of a different colour and his utter disregard for their horrific plight.
Not satisfied with that, he aimed his social media bazooka in Times of Malta’s direction and attacked the newspaper for reporting the very fact that he made these comments.
In cahoots with our “gang of Nationalist bedfellows”, he accused us of wanting people live like “sheep” and remain hidden from view.
His past and present actions have spoken much louder than his uncouth words in this regard but in any case, he is rather missing the point.
Like the President, whose comments we welcome and support wholeheartedly, it is precisely because we don’t want people to be hidden from view that we speak out in favour of the rights of people – irrespective of their colour or creed – who risk their life, and meet their death, in the Mediterranean.
And like any person who enjoys the democracy that came into being after the government of which he formed part was voted out of office, we support wholeheartedly anyone’s right to express an opinion providing it is not insulting, hateful or discriminatory.
Yet, even if we were to assume that his Facebook comments were none of the above – which would be a pretty shaky assumption – there is one inconvenient truth that remains: he is a government appointee, for something tourism-related to boot, which means he cannot shoot his mouth off at any given moment and not expect the media to ask the government whether he is fit for such a position.
The fact of the matter is that the only thing he is fit for is to be consigned to the less pleasant annals of Malta’s history, and if there are sheep to be found anywhere, they are in the Office of the Prime Minister, which said – contrary to previous pronouncements about others in the Labour fold who have had social media accidents – that Mr Grima was merely expressing a “personal opinion”.
If people want to express such disgraceful personal opinions, they should make sure they relinquish any appointments that are connected with our country – no matter how special they think they are or purport to be.