Prime Minister Joseph Muscat on Sunday said he was “disgusted” by some people’s level of racism and intolerance in the wake of the hijack of a commercial vessel on Wednesday evening.
Addressing Labour Party supporters in Mtarfa, Dr Muscat said that while the country’s armed forces had received praise for the way they handled the situation, including, he said, from other heads of states, some people had resorted to racist and intolerant discourse.
“I was disgusted that while we were sensitive to the situation, all the while taking the necessary action, there were some people, who should know better, who were practically saying we should have shot and sunk the ship.
“I’m not saying that we do not understand those who express concern because of the influx of foreigners living in their locality. We have in fact taken steps to step up security in certain places, such as Marsa. But we cannot accept racist and intolerant discourse,” Dr Muscat said.
On Freedom Day, which is being celebrated today, Dr Muscat said that it was crucial to keep in mind that all national feasts are of importance to the nation’s history. In recent years, he said, the Labour government had been striving to shift the mentality that one public holiday is celebrated by a group of people and another by a different group.
He went on to insist that moving forward, if the country wanted to remain free, it could not build walls around itself.
“We need to understand that to move forward, we cannot build walls. We need to be open. It is very attractive to have politics based on the building of walls. After you build walls all around you, you will soon realise that you have imprisoned yourself. We want to continue inspiring people to challenge things and to inspire ourselves by the ideals that made our country free.
“Our freedom is not a celebration of extreme nationalism. [Former Prime Minister] Dom Mintoff wanted Malta to be free so that we can sit alongside other nations on tables,” Dr Muscat went on.
Moving on to outline the past week’s main events, Dr Muscat hailed the unveiling of the National Space Strategy, admitting that when he first heard about such a move, he himself had laughed at the proposed vision that was put before him, but he then soon learnt that there was great scope for investment in an “innovative sector”. Innovation, he went on, would be the driving force behind the government’s work in the coming year.
On arts and culture, Dr Muscat said that this is another area that is successfully moving forward. Through Valletta 2018, he said, the country had showcased how much good can be done through arts and culture. In fact, jobs in the sector increased by 18 per cent, he said.
Referring to a public consultation document that was also unveiled earlier on in the week and which could see Parliament growing by up to 12 seats to increase the number of women MPs, Dr Muscat said that it was unacceptable that there had only ever been a total of 27 women elected.
“How can we accept the fact that, for as long as there have been elections in Malta, there have only ever been 27 women elected? This tells me that there is something intrinsically wrong in the system.
“We want to have 40 per cent of MPs women. Is this really such a big thing?” the Prime Minister went on, insisting that while other countries had introduced other measures to address the gender imbalance problem, Malta could not because of the way its MPs are elected.
While other countries had asked political parties to include a woman for every man in Parliament to ensure equal participation, the system in Malta, which lets voters choose individual candidates, did not make this a viable option, he pointed out.
The proposed changes, Dr Muscat said, would not be set in stone forever, but aimed at addressing the present situation and it was then up to future generations to continue working on the issue depending on the changes that would have continued to occur over time.