The incidents surrounding Hungarian student Jack Daboma’s arrest are symptomatic of a number of worrying and ingrained aspects of Maltese culture.

First, a cockeyed transport and bus card system destined to put people off before they’ve even tried it. Really, how hard can it be to get something right the first time? Why not sell cards over the counter and be done with it?

Then of course there’s the matter of that unsupervised queue. There’s a lesson for government right there. Failure to properly supervise will lead to clashes and incidents.

Queues are anathema to the Maltese, who are incapable of standing in line and hate being told what to do.

For all his good intentions, but understandably frustrated with the inexcusable ineptitude of a system that had kept him (and many others) waiting for hours two days running, Daboma was probably operating on a short fuse that day.

With his decision to organise a Maltese queue, and given the possible consequences of doing so, Daboma undeniably courted controversy. Some people – equally frustrated – would necessarily have been displaced and bumped further back, and I can only imagine the pushing and shoving and effing and blinding that followed.

Jack Daboma was let down by our forces of law and order

I’m sure many were hugely unhappy with Daboma’s boldness that day, and thought him cocky provocative and overreaching.

I wrestled with all these thoughts.

I was – and still am – profoundly sorry for Daboma, and upset by what I saw on the video. His laugh was the laugh of a desperate man whose cause had not been championed – a man spat upon and jeered at, then misjudged and unfairly treated. Make no mistake, Daboma was let down by our forces of law and order. On ‘Christian’ Malta he was “despised and forsaken of men”. That’s Biblical, incidentally – Isaiah 53: 3.

Seeing him lose his spectacles was heart-breaking. It spoke of a much greater loss, stripped him of his dignity and reinforced his suffering and vulnerability.

Yet, despite my anger, I found myself wondering, hoping even, that this was not a racially motivated incident but just bad-breeding and official incompetence, and nothing to do with the colour of Daboma’s skin.

I wanted to believe that a ‘European-looking’ Frenchman or Englishman – even a Maltese – would have met the same fate for attempting to do the same thing.

Then I pondered the following: would I – and others – have felt as angry if Daboma had been a white man of questionable appearance, a yob by any other name with enough piercings or tattoos to look like a trouble-maker?

If not – if Malta’s collective anger would’ve been considerably less were Daboma that questionable white-man – then that’s perhaps another kind of racism. The ‘privileging’ of a black skin. My guess is that some of those who took to Facebook to condemn the attack are, consciously or unconsciously, racist in that way. And perhaps pretending to be otherwise is another part of the problem.

But whatever shape or form it takes, popular racism and xenophobic insularity are definitely part of our Maltese DNA. Some stories you hear are spine-chilling. Muslims have the worst of it at present, and I am sick to the back teeth hearing people say they hate them. These people confuse Isis with Islam. Trying to re-educate such people is probably ‘pie in the sky’.

But this sorry affair isn’t just about one woman’s racism, bad manners or stupidity. Apart from the onlookers and their awful complicit cheering, there’s an even more disturbing reality: the incompetence, institutional racism and ignorance of some of the ‘chav’ Maltese police.

Clearly some of the basic blokes of the Police Force think that spitting on a black guy and telling him to go home does not require remonstration. Perhaps the national mindset can’t entertain the idea of an educated, articulate black being a European citizen!

The home affairs and other ministries did well to react and initiate an open enquiry. This is something Malta has got to get completely right – not just ‘more or less right’ – especially if she is so dependent on visitors and tourism. I wonder if the incident has found its way to the Hungarian and international media?

Exactly how many enquiries will it take before the home affairs minister finally understands that there has been something rotting away in the Maltese Police Force for years, and under successive governments?

It is a sad reflection that the majority of comments on this incident simply deteriorated into a PN/PL slanging match. The politicising of everything on Malta is yet another national tragedy.

Entry to the Malta Police should not be a free for all, nor should it be a breeding ground for incompetence. We need intelligent policemen who are properly trained after having successfully undergone a challenging and wholly apolitical selection process, plus rigorous background checks. The Maltese Civil Service needs a similar shake-up – including entry to the higher grades by competitive examination.

We desperately need a courteous and conscientious police force. It must respond at all times decisively and expeditiously. It must show sensitivity when encountering discrimination and must know how to keep people in line (oh the irony!). This will range indeed from supervising a queue, through routine enforcement, to the ruthless detection of criminality.

And here perception is so very important. The police must be seen to act for the victims of crimes. There have been too many instances of police violence over the years, and much embarrassment – some of it international – for the Maltese government.

There is also too much official discrimination against EU citizens, often bureaucratic.

I shudder to think how this incident might have played out had it ended up in court – with no witnesses other than the police and no footage. The police would have closed ranks and Daboma might easily have ended up in jail. We need to legislate racism and prejudice out of all our systems and understand that we are all part of the problem and, ultimately, the solution.

michelaspiteri@gmail.com