This newspaper carried the story yesterday that the number of racial offences reported in Malta is a record low in the European Union. I can’t help thinking that it’s got little to do with the absence of racial offences and plenty to do with lack of awareness about what constitutes a racial offence.

The figures given in the report show that the more developed the society, the higher the number of racial offences reported. And so Estonia has one report, Malta has three, and Sweden has 2,575. The United Kingdom, with its over-emphatic focus on racial discrimination and racial offences, and its near-obsessive regulation, has managed to ratchet up 60,407 racist incidents and 41,382 racially or religiously aggravated offences. There should be a happy medium somewhere between the UK and Malta or Estonia.

The figures were given in the annual report of the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights. This praised the UK for its comprehensive reporting (but really, I think it’s too much over there), and criticised Malta for its lack of reporting (and yes, they’re right there). Another 15 member states got a ticking-off, too. Malta was singled out for “rather limited reporting on a few court cases”. Yes. The kind of racial reporting we get here is “Somali arrested for male rape” or “Libyan jailed for theft”, but strangely, never “Maltese gets life for murdering his wife”.

* * *

Anglu Farrugia says on his website that he is renowned for his ‘ferocious speeches’. Those are about the only two words on his portal that are spelled correctly, but never mind. He graduated magna cum laude in law from the University of Malta, as he keeps reminding us, so he must know how to spell simple English words and the website must have been written up by an elf. He’d better engage a proof-reader, pronto, lest his magna cum laude image be further eroded.

We are about to be treated to the first of what might yet be a long list of ferocious displays: about the privatisation of the shipyards. The news has been welcomed by everyone except the employees and the Labour Party, which faces the first test of Joseph Muscat’s “work together” mantra, and is about to fail it. Words are cheap – or as one might say in a bar, “bull**** walks”.

Magna cum laude Farrugia said in parliament that the opposition does not agree with this privatisation exercise because – get this – “it is being carried out by the government”. Well, excuse me, Inspector Clouseau, but who did you expect to get cracking on the privatisation of the shipyards, if not the government? And the answer is further down in a report of his ferocious speech: the opposition, in consultation with the government, in that order.

* * *

This is Joseph Muscat’s refrain, and he is going to repeat it in the time-honoured Sant style, until it sinks into the consciousness of a largely uncritical population: the government should do everything in consultation with the opposition, because it is a minority government.

The man, of course, is utterly ridiculous. But the public throes of enthusiasm for anything-is-better-than-Sant have blinded that largely uncritical population to this simple fact. It is not the prime minister who had a honeymoon, but the opposition leader who is having one now. At this stage, he can say and do anything, however farcical and infantile, and people will stand and stare with their drooling jaws hanging open. It’s quite amusing, like being one of the few sober people at a party where everyone else is either drunk or stoned.

The government governs. The opposition opposes where necessary. But the opposition does not govern, or share the reins of government, because it was not elected to the seat of government. Joseph Muscat and his accompanying Tweedledum and Tweedledee just have to put that in their pipes and smoke it.

Instead of trying to shove Muscat into a shared premiership role which cannot possibly exist, they should spend the next five years working on an electoral programme without misprints and major policy errors. And because recent history has shown that the new leader tends towards major errors of judgement about the most crucial matters (VAT, the EU), he had better be closely monitored on that score, too. We don’t want him popping up again in four years’ time and saying: “Ooops, I made a mistake!” An error of judgement of that magnitude should have discredited him permanently, but this is Malta, so he will become prime minister. That’s how we handle things here, which is why so many of us often feel we are living in a real life comedy sketch.

* * *

A study of Maltese schoolchildren aged 11, 13 and 15, sponsored by the World Health Organisation, reveals that 37 per cent of them live with just one of their natural parents. There’s been a bit of a kerfuffle about it, not necessarily because of concern for these children, but because it shatters once and for all the myth that Maltese family life is inviolable and the cornerstone on which our country is built.

Whenever I raise the subject of the large numbers of what used to be called, in my parents’ day, broken homes, I have statistics quoted at me by my elders and betters. The marital breakdown rate in Malta is actually quite low. Look, there are only this many separations compared to that many people who are still married: 6.8 per cent of married people are actually separated.

I was never convinced of this. Among my own extended network of friends, acquaintances and people I know through work, the figure seems rather closer to 40 per cent. Another difficulty is that the numbers are not broken down to reflect the truth: that the marriages of those aged 25 to 50 are hitting the rocks at an alarming rate, but the marriages of those aged 50+ are not. I know this because I can see what’s happening around me.

I fished out a party guest list from 1996 the other day, and to my amazement, I realised that at least half the number of couples on it are no longer married to each other, and most have formed unions with others. Nor are the figures broken down according to socio-economic group. I would say that the highest rate of breakdown is at the opposite ends of the social scale, but what I want is the hard and fast numbers. What I want? It’s what Malta needs, if the government – and the opposition in its policy-making – are to plan properly.