The Prime Minister last Saturday introduced what may become the theme for the coming election campaign: Malta's next level will be to become a cosmopolitan island.
Of course, this is a political spin, a myth in making, trying to portray what Malta will be in the future, naturally if Labour gets re-elected.
But it is worthwhile reflect on this theme and analyse it.
Malta in 2017 has become a multi-ethnic country. The influx of so many people from so many countries has incalculably changed our island nation. We can say that no town, no village is purely Maltese as used to be the norm until some years ago. There are then towns, like St Paul's Bay, or St Julian's where non-Maltese now make up a substantial portion of the residents.
We can also speak of enclaves of people from the same country congregated in a specific area, such as Serbs in St Paul's Bay, Libyans in St Julian's and so on.
It has become customary to address people serving you in shops and restaurants in English on the presumption they are foreigners.
There is a bedrock of xenophobic racism but that is generally directed at people of a dark colour, on the presumption they are boat people, that is people who have reached Malta on a boat claiming asylum and refuge.
But otherwise Malta has largely adapted to be a multi-ethnic country. Now Dr Muscat speaks of Malta becoming a cosmopolitan country. That is quite a different level. We may have become multi-ethnic gradually, almost without noticing it, but to become a cosmopolitan country requires, as we see it, a conscious effort on the part of the whole country.
In a multi-ethnic country people find themselves living next to people from other countries almost by accident. In a cosmopolitan country, that is in general the aim. To move from a multi-ethnic country to a cosmopolitan one means you shed the appearance of a third world city suburb to become a country which enhances the cosmopolitan approach to life.
That is already a tall order for Malta. It means replacing the shoddy roads we have with comfortable, state-of-the-art roads that insist on efficiency and smoothness. It means replacing the third world appearance at City Gate with something far different.
It means replacing the almost entire airline routes coming to Malta based on a Malta-centric structure, to an airport where people can land and connect to other flights. That is what would make Malta a cosmopolitan country. It makes no sense, for instance, for a businessman from Switzerland to have to take two flights to get to Malta and then have to spend a night or more here because there are no return flights when you want them.
It means offering visitors a more upmarket range of services. One cannot say such services do not exist but they are quite restricted and sometimes even unavailable. Cosmopolitan visitors expect much more and as a normal service.
There was recently an advert on an international paper advertising a top-notch property in Mdina with a swimming pool on the bastions, noting that this property is only five minutes away by helicopter to the airport when we all know, but foreigners do not, this service is unavailable.
Finally, when we say we want Malta to become a cosmopolitan country we must also mean that the Maltese institutions, like democracy, rule of law, judicial processes, freedom of the press, etc are of the first world level. One cannot speak of a cosmopolitan country with weak judicial processes like some ex-USSR country.
If the Prime Minister, mesmerised by his recent family visit to the Gulf thought the Dubai-sation of Malta will turn it to a cosmopolitan country, he is sorely mistaken. Dubai may have skyscrapers and its geographic location makes it an interesting cross roads between East and West. But it is not a cosmopolitan country because its wealth is built on the backs of so many imported labourers who have no rights at all and who one can see being ferried from and to shanty towns where they sleep three or more to a room between their hours of work.