News | Sunday, 03 May 2009

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A game of sink or swim

International criticism of Malta’s detention regime, Mediterranean standoffs, and socialist ‘immigration plans’ proposing the suspension of Malta’s international obligations – as human life is sacrificed to political football in this election of MEPs, it’s rationality that gets thrown out the window once again, JAMES DEBONO says.

With polls having clearly proved that illegal immigration is the ‘big issue’ for next June’s election for the European Parliament, rival parties and candidates are doing their best to transform a human tragedy into a game of political football.
Last month, playing his own game of political football in Italy, the racist Lega Nord’s firebrand minister of the interior Roberto Maroni inadvertently passed a golden ball to an ailing government in Malta. Expecting tiny Malta to take on 140 migrants stranded on a Turkish cargo ship that was geographically closer to Lampedusa, he gave Lawrence Gonzi a chance to prove he was no soft touch at defending the national interest – the interest so loudly invoked by Opposition Leader Joseph Muscat, who recently presented Labour’s action plan on immigration in parliament.
For all his posturing at being ‘progressive’, Muscat’s immigration plan is anything but, with all socialist pretensions falling by the wayside. Twice already he has proposed the unthinkable when saying Malta should not exclude suspending its international obligations if the international community did not act and the number of arrivals continued to exceed what Malta could handle.
But his Machiavellian streak has proved useful as Italy this week blockaded the entry to Lampedusa, forcing a Maltese patrol boat to turn back with 66 migrants it saved after Italy said it was not able to rescue them.
In the previous Pinar case, as things had it, here was Italy trying to suspend its own obligations by claiming dubious legal grounds to force Malta take in migrants that were nearer to the port of Lampedusa. At the end of the day, it was international law that safeguarded Malta’s rights when it successfully invoked a clause of the SOLAS Convention that immigrants rescued in the high seas should be taken to the nearest port of call.
Largely untouched by the human tragedy on board the Pinar, where a pregnant woman lost her life, Malta was instead in celebratory mood as the minnows emerged victorious over the Italian Goliath. The PN moved for a political kill with its organ il-mument blasting Labour for being “anti-national” for daring to criticise the government’s immigration policy during its standoff with Italy.
To the discerning voter, the Pinar episode starkly revealed the hollow nature of Labour’s 20-point action plan – had Malta shunned its international obligations, it would have lost any right to invoke the SOLAS. The episode only served to reinforce the ‘safe hands’ perception the PN enjoys in times of crisis – providentially enough for the PN, as polls show Labour overtaking it on immigration since Muscat’s Enoch Powell moment in parliament.
But now the tables have turned yet again – and the latest standoff at Lampedusa has now soured Maltese-Italian relations, and given Muscat enough political ground to criticise Gonzi for not being tough enough to refuse taking the 66 migrants to Malta when Lampedusa was the nearest, safe port of call.

MEPs and immigration
In the past year support for the PN’s immigration policy fell from 23.5% to 17.7%; while support for Labour’s policy grew from 17.8% to 22.7%.
Significantly 11.1% of PN voters in the 2008 election preferred Labour’s more belligerent policy. And like Labour, 84% of respondents think Malta faces a “national crisis” because of immigration, a concern fuelled by wild misconceptions to the extent that 50.4% believe that fewer than 500 migrants have been repatriated or left the island in the past five years.
Another MaltaToday survey showed illegal immigration topping the list of popular concerns, surpassing even pressing economic concerns like unemployment and the economic crisis. The MEP candidates know this. Some, like PN candidate Frank Portelli have been firing immigration missives indiscriminately – others like incumbent Simon Busuttil, who authored a resolution on a common immigration policy, have managed to turn the whole debate into a battle between the PN and the socialist-green conglomerate.
Before the Pinar incident, the PN’s immigration worries were further complicated by a cacophony of voices: disgraced backbencher Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando suggested towing out immigrants back to Libya; Frank Portelli proposed European sanctions against Libya only to be rebuked by Home Affairs Minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici.
Now, galvanised by its show of force with Italy, the PN has skilfully exploited the deep chasm between the insular Labour Party and the European Socialist family in the European parliament.
And all thanks to an amendment approved by a majority of Socialists, Greens, Communists and Liberals calling for legally resident, long-term migrants living in EU countries to be given “the opportunity to vote in local elections”.
Naturally enough, the Labour MEPs voted against the amendment, eager not to appear so supportive of these rights – but Busuttil craftily exploited their failure to persuade their own political group to likewise vote against.
And Busuttil also played on words by giving the impression that the amendment gave “migrants” the right to vote – when it only referred to legal immigrants, and refugees, who are permanent residents.
To a rational audience out there, it is Busuttil – not the socialists and the greens – who has crossed the proverbial red line with his hardline stance and for creating a storm in a teacup on giving legal, hardworking and taxpaying migrants the right to vote. EU residents in Malta, already vote in local council elections. Even prominent figures in the European right like Italy’s post-fascist Gianfranco Fini and French President Nicolas Sarkozy are in favour of giving legal migrants the right to vote at local level.
Still Busuttil did hit the nail on its head when he observed that while “in Malta the Labour Party shuns immigration and plays the veto card, in Brussels the Socialists play a different tune and want to give migrants voting rights.” You could say it’s the pot calling the kettle black – but enough to embarrass Labour’s reticence from joining its progressive cousins in Brussels.
Ironically Labour failed to point out that the least the PN could do after the Pinar incident was to boast of its international affiliation in the European People’s Party which includes Silvio Berlusconi’s Popolo della Libertà.

Hostile territory
The MEPs’ vote on the amendment for voting rights was also an occasion for Busuttil to expose Alternattiva Demokratika’s ties with the European Greens, known for their stance in favour of integrating migrants in the social fabric.
But the local greens have taken a defensive position on the issue, limiting themselves to reminding the Maltese that their allies in the European Parliament were among the first to propose burden sharing between member states.
As the Greens’ voting record in the European Parliament shows, that is only part of the story. While they are the most likely to welcome migrants from Malta into their country, they are also the most vociferous in defending migrants’ human and civil rights. In the hostile Maltese terrain dominated by irrational fears, this could be a constant source of embarrassment for the local greens.
Immigration has also exposed the contradictions of the local far-right. Azzjoni Nazzjonali’s counterparts in Europe like Maroni’s Lega Nord are the most hostile to any notion of burden sharing. No wonder AN is the only Maltese party to forthrightly renounce on membership to any pan European political grouping – an action which will relegate them to irrelevance in a parliament where political groups run the show.
But ultimately, irrespective of their result in June’s election the Maltese far-right have succeeded in turning immigration into the big issue of the moment – a prospect which could return to haunt the political establishment if the immigrant ghettoes growing in our midst become restless when we capitulate to the right-wing agenda in which integration has no place.

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