The Labour government has “lost all sense of principle” in dealing with irregular migration, University professor of education studies Peter Mayo said yesterday.
Speaking at a forum on ‘Fortress Europe, Imperialistic Wars and Migration Nowadays’, Prof. Mayo accused the government of sacrificing its socialist ideals for votes.
“My kind of socialism is international socialism. Interethnicity is the core of this,” he said.
The professor and author contrasted the current government with former Labour leader Dom Mintoff, who was at loggerheads with Archbishop Michael Gonzi in the 1960s over the Church’s influence in civil and political matters.
Mr Mintoff lost two elections in the 1960s, something Prof. Mayo attributed partly to his principled but divisive stance on Church-State relations.
“Had Mintoff played the game like the current government [is playing the migration game], he might not have lost those elections,” Prof. Mayo said.
Since coming to power in March, the government has adopted a hard line on what it frequently terms “illegal migration”.
Last July, the European Court of Human Rights had to intervene to prevent the government deporting dozens of newly arrived Somalis before allowing them to apply for asylum in accordance with international law.
Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has repeatedly stamped his feet on irregular migration, going as far as threatening to veto unrelated EU matters if member states did not offer more assistance.
Any movement with social solidarity at its core should be committed to investing in anti-racist education
The island received 2008 irregular migrants and asylum seekers by boat last year. Eighty-two per cent of these were granted some form of protection.
Malta has long argued that the EU should adopt a mandatory system for dispersing refugees and asylum seekers equitably across member states.
Individual states have rejected this, although Malta has received some €91 million in EU funding to tackle migration issues over the past six years, not including emergency funds.
Prof. Mayo volunteered to answer a question directed to the forum’s speakers on how to respond to the challenge of the far-right. He argued that a “bigger problem” was that “one-time socialist parties” had moved to the right on migration in order to win cheap votes.
Asked to specify whether his answer referred to Malta, Prof. Mayo replied: “I had the Maltese Labour Party in mind when I was speaking.”
He continued that irregular migration had become the “taboo issue” in Malta that both main political parties knew could cost them votes if they did not adopt a “populist” stance.
Instead of pandering to anti-migrant sentiments, Prof. Mayo felt the government had a duty to steer the public discourse away from the notion that refugees and irregular migrants were a “burden” to bear.
“Any movement with social solidarity at its core should be committed to investing in anti-racist education,” he said.
The forum was organised by the Garden of Knowledge Malta Association and held at Dar l-Ewropa in Valletta.