A superficial observer may well think the Maltese in general are quite comfortably insulated from anything going on in the world, focused only on their village feasts, the Ice Bucket challenge, and the bickering that goes for politics in our country.

That superficial observer would be very wrong.

The Maltese did not need to become members of the EU to open up to the big wide world; they already were. The history of at least the past 200 years saw them part of a vast British Empire which straddled the Mediterranean and whatever happened around the Med had immediate consequences on the island.

There is a big difference between then and now: then, the Maltese were not in control over their country. Now, they are. One may argue that now the Maltese are in the EU and have to obey the EU laws and decisions. That is true. But the Maltese are still in control of their destiny, EU or no EU. As they will undoubtedly prove in the near future.

There is a deplorable lack of proper information over what is going on around us, with most news media in Malta being subjected and tied to just one news source and its bias. Nevertheless, the general thrust of what is happening and today’s social media are quickly filling in the gap.

Suddenly, the contours of the world as we knew it have changed. The Arab Spring has produced and delivered a Libya that is out of control.

Further away, the civil war in Syria has now developed into the Caliphate, with ISIS warriors getting their hands on sophisticated weapons the US gave the Iraqis and using them to break down frontiers, enslave non-believers in their kind of Islam and brutally massacre those who resist forceful conversion to Islam.

There was (is) also the Gaza tragedy, but the very strong condemnation of Israeli action by many university lecturers was not followed by the rest of the population. On the contrary, I would say, the majority of people I saw on comment pages supported Israel and condemned the academics.

Now all this has come to a head and is immediately understood by the Maltese population through one and only prism: the asylum seekers, refugees, migrants, boat people, call them what you want, who land here.

Fact 1: I cannot discern the population splitting on this issue along party lines as it splits on just about everything else. The issue troubles far more people than speak out.

Fact 2: The issue has now gone beyond the Normal Lowell rabid exhortations of past years. Then along came Joseph Muscat who in one unguarded moment spoke of pushing them back. He has not used the same rhetoric since then, not because they stopped coming but because he ran into a brick wall. Today, PL supporters are angry and without any tangible proposal on how to deal with the situation. And the boat people still come. It is a safe bet the situation in Libya will keep pushing them towards us and towards Italy, where they would like to go.

Fact 3: Talk about Libya and people immediately switch to talking about the migrants. Talk about Syria and people do the same. Talk about ISIS and people do the same.

There was a time when the country was split between the Lowell acolytes and the Jesuits who argued for a more humane treatment of the migrants. This split has moved on. For all people’s expressions of anger and the simple solutions they mouth, no one seriously thinks of sending them back. A far vaster majority however worries not just about the migrants but about the causes of the migrant tide. There is a general understanding that if instability persists in Libya, Syria, etc, the number of people fleeing from war will increase. And with ISIS on the rampage, Christians and Yazidis become the new wave of migrants.

I find this very strange: we say we are living at a time when Malta’s Catholic basis has been shaken and when it seems this is losing ground. That may be true of the orthodox church-going Catholics who obeyed the priests and followed their teachings in their daily lives.

But each summer season sees a huge percentage of Maltese celebrating feasts with abandon, mainly people who on an ordinary Sunday do not go to church.

And the huge majority who have been publicly and volubly attacking the Muslim fanatics such as ISIS, without making any distinction between ISIS and moderate Islam seem to have come straight from the times of the Knights when Malta was at the forefront of the battles against Islam.

Sometimes I wonder which the real bedrock of the Maltese spirit is: is it the Catholic faith as is usually said or is it rabid anti-Islam?

Right now there is widespread anger, mainly among PL supporters, who rail against the Muscat government for promising an easy solution before the election only to find there are no easy solutions.

On the PN side, and I have been saying this for a long time, the leadership still has to come to terms with the problem and come up with a real understanding of what people at grassroots level are feeling and thinking.

No one, as far as I can see, has offered a solution to the problem. We are all going round in circles, the situation does not seem to be getting any better and ahead of us we can see dark clouds. The recent European Parliament election has seen an increase in the xenophobic fringe but this is also what happened elsewhere in Europe, and maybe in Malta it was more muted.

This is what I said at the beginning of this article: the Maltese may be insular in their pastimes and their pleasures but they are wired to what is happening outside the narrow confines of the national frontiers. It is not just the Maltese political leaders who have no idea how to tackle and resolve the issue, not just the Maltese public at large, but also the majority of Europeans.

Tackling immigration has become a huge issue in most European countries, from Italy to the UK and countries in between. Add to this the economic difficulties many countries are facing and you may have the beginning of something we have no idea what it will be, but most probably it will be drastic and xenophobic. Fortress Europe will become even more of a fortress, undermined however by the swarms of migrants pouring in through the very porous frontiers.

Something will have to give. The situation is not restricted to Malta, it has become an EU-wide issue and the beleaguered peoples of Europe still have to find a way to tackle it.

If an earthquake in Greece can be felt in Malta, so too an issue we thought is just ours is being felt continent-wide. We are still not in a position to say there is one country which has found the solution between pulling up the drawbridges and integration. So far, countries are just kicking the can down the road, preferably to the next neighbour and the thousands, the millions that are coming in are forming a new underclass, a new proletariat, a new sub-level of poverty that will put an almighty strain on the social security system that Europe is so proud of.

 

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