Puerile, populist and positively wrong

I woke up in the morning, realising that Malta was not quite right.

The coffee shop in the square had a sign, ‘closed no staff’. On the pavement, the organic bags and black bags and recycled bags were piling behind the doorsteps and the postman was nowhere to be seen.

My elder relatives at the care home had their bedpans overflowing with faeces and urine, patients waited on wheelchairs in queues. Buses stood motionless in Marsa and Valletta and everywhere, construction sites were like forgotten corners with no activity to be seen.

Restaurants put up Facebook comments that they would not be open for the foreseeable future and supermarkets issued statements to apologise for excessively long queues due to lack of staff.

At the airport, passengers had to take their bags to the area under the airplane’s hold and asked to walk to the plane. State and private schools issued emails, excusing themselves for the dirty toilets and litter-strewn playgrounds. And Bolt, Wolt, Uber and ecabs announced that they would suspending service due to serious staff shortages.

Hoteliers called for an urgent meeting with the prime minister to explain that they would have to close…

This is the worst scenario—a nightmare. I do not think it will come to this but that is what some of the erratic social media commentors are suggesting this country should become when they argue we should get rid of the foreigners.

The truth is that most people want to ignore the way this country has changed and the dependence it has on the foreign work force for our daily needs.

The measures targeting foreign workers announced by Clyde Caruana in the budget are the most socially repressive one could introduce. More so, coming from a Labour Party. 

Across the political spectrum there is a general distaste for foreigners. But unlike France and England where unemployment is high, Malta has no issue with jobs on offer. On the other hand, we have an issue with colour and nationalism. We are superficial. Worst of all is the Labour Party, which, with few exceptions, has lost its soul. The PN led by Alex Borg does not even know what to say when it comes to foreigners—caught between its overpopulation rhetoric and a government whose actions foment division but do little to address the issue.

When Labour’s new man Joseph Muscat landed in Castille in 2013, he understood that a sudden shift in quality of life was possible if the economic growth was steep. He lifted bureaucracy, changed planning rules, encouraged more women to work and when the limits of Malta’s labour force were reached, opened his hands to foreign workers.

In the years that followed, the Labour Party argued that foreign workers did not threaten the Maltese workforce but added value and diversity.  Businessmen embraced this idea and knew that if it were not for the influx of foreign workers, they would not have been able to realise their dreams in record time, while benefitting from sizeable profits.

The whole model, for good or for worse, is geared for a tiger economy that cannot persist without a dynamic and flexible labour force. The Maltese labour force is too small and unaccommodating and set in its ways to make this economy a reality.

When Robert Abela was asked by MaltaToday journalist Matthew Farrugia about the social injustice meted out to third country nationals with the new measures, Abela referenced MaltaToday surveys on population concerns as a justification for them.

The same man had declared not so long ago that he never gave much importance to surveys.

It was clear as the dust settled, that the fiscal measures applied to TCNs were meant to create another revenue stream to make up for the very serious shortfall from the lucrative spending on subsidies that will amount to €400 million next year.

So, instead of introducing measures that would bring some sense into the equation, such as means testing, Clyde Caruana went for the easy target—sucking up monies from the hard working and over worked third country nationals.

Not only was the direction completely anathema to the core values of a socialist party but it conveniently failed, willingly or by sheer stupidity, to understand that the only way of bringing down the population was by limiting economic activity.  The government did not introduce a moratorium on new hotel permits or pour cold water on the construction industry. Instead, it opted to target the vulnerable.

It appears that the only noise the government was willing to listen to was that of the fascists applauding government on social media.

And then there was the suggestion that the measures will help industry to go for automation.

So, wait for it; the bedpans will be removed by robots, buses will be driverless, grapes will be picked up by robots, restaurant patrons will be served by robowaiters and a robot will ring the bell and hand over the €1,000 cheque from Clyde and Co.. The best one of all; my arse will be wiped clean in a hospital bed by an extended sponge on a robot’s dynamic arm.

Apart from feeling sick, I am lost for words.

The Qrendi uprising

When residents in Qrendi gate-crashed Miriam Dalli’s opening ceremony of a garden to show their disdain and anger over their locality’s treatment by the Planning Authority—it had just approved a massive construction in the historic centre—they represented a widespread sentiment.

I do not think that people are not positive about green lungs in the middle of their own urban sprawl. But they are incensed that as this happens our cores and pristine areas are assaulted by planning applications green-lighted by the pro-development PA.

Miriam Dalli was caught in the middle of all this, and her words were candid to say the least.  She said that she acknowledged residents’ concerns about excessive development in rural communities, adding that she had raised the issue both in parliament and during private discussions. However, she stressed that her position did not allow her to intervene directly in decisions taken by the Planning Authority.

But we all know how things operate in Malta. And the Planning Authority is not the independent authority it purports to be. The PA today, and in the past, has had an umbilical cord to Castille and politicians.

Miriam Dalli may not influence the decisions taken by the PA but she can stamp her feet about change in policy and attitude. The man who can decide this change is Robert Abela, who has shown increasing adversity to slowing down development.

The Qrendi local council is a Labour-led council and the majority of the 1,000 signatories opposed to the building permit are Labourites.

If there is a survey that is sending a message loud and clear that we have had enough, it is this.

The same socially inept fervour the Abela administration applied for TCNs it can apply to planning policy. But the reluctance to do this tells a story that has yet to be scripted.