President: ‘Compassion and understanding are MPs’ duties on migration, environment’

Malta’s president Marie Louise Coleiro Preca delivered a memorable speech outside the new parliament designed by the world renowned architect Renzo Piano, in the form of an imploration to MPs to face up to their duties of compassion and understanding when it comes to migration, poverty, and the environment.

Coleiro Preca’s speech was a timely appeal to MPs at a time when migration in the Mediterranean was dominating the European agenda, and when the Labour administration’s lackadaisical attitude on the natural environment was becoming a national concern.

Her speech featured familiar themes on parliamentary civility, constructive criticism, political maturity, inclusive politics, and a reminder on the constitutional renewal promised in the Labour Party manifesto which advocates a “second republic” through an updated Constitution.

“A strong and genuine democracy is one which, while reflecting the choices of the majority in a representative democracy, listens and respects the ideas of minorities – not only parliamentary – and other voices in society. It reflects the voices among us, the weakest in society, whose voice might not be the loudest.”

But Coleiro Preca’s mark of independence was made as she addressed the issues of global poverty, migration, and sustainable development, in ways that were meant to prod hard at the conscience of political leaders and MPs.

“I cannot ignore what is happening around us. Thousands upon thousands are leaving continents struck by the ugly consequences of their colonial history and different forms of violent situations.

“They are running from crippling states of underdevelopment with little chance of employment, civil wars whose roots are in the arms industry, the spread of disease like Ebola and the effects of climate change.”

Coleiro Preca raised the issue of EU subsidies on agriculture, that in turn made it impossible for African producers to sell their products competitively in foreign markets because of import duties.

“These situations have pushed people of all ages to leave for other countries, crossing the Sahara into Libya and other north African countries, to try their luck to cross into Europe after giving all they own to those exploiting their misery.”

Coleiro Preca called on MPs to make a collective effort to hear the voices of asylum seekers, migrants and refugees. “Awareness and compassion are two qualities that are indeed duties of any MP… do not let yourself be swayed by the few vociferous voices against these fellow human beings, and continue with your work in the EU to find an international and human situation to the issue of migration from Africa and the Middle East. In that way we shall not depend on national solutions to what is a global problem.”

The President went further, insisting that MPs remain mindful of the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Rights of the Refugee, which grants humans the right to seek asylum and humanitarian visas.

“20,000 have lost their lives crossing the Mediterranean… these are shameful scenes for humanity, a testimony of those who do not register on our moral compass, who seem to not nave the right to life and instead be treated as human waste.”

Coleiro Preca told MPs to address poverty, saying citizens were unable to make ends meet with a minimum wage and called for a discussion on a social wage. “Poverty undermines participatory democracy. Those who don’t have a cent to their name find it difficult to take part in the public sphere.”

Her next warning came on the environment, a timely intervention following the resignation en bloc of the committee led by Guardian of Future Generations – the former UN climate change head Michael Zammit Cutajar – and the announcement of a private university campus on virgin land for 4,000 paying students.

“I am realizing that our future generations are concerns about urban developments that are leaving them with no recreational space to enjoy the environment. It is MPs’ duties to ensure the safeguarding of our human and natural environment with laws that respect sustainable development, and that these do not get breached. Our duty is to those who come after us, for it is from them that we are loaning this environment.”