This week's comments made on the social media by a prospective, but thankfully unelected, political candidate calling for a boycott on what is arguably the country's most beloved annual charity event, L-Istrina, because of an erroneous claim that it will give funds for the integration of irregular migrants who have settled in Malta, were nothing short of heinous.

But even more heinous was the fact that the social media posts of a clearly racist and completely uninformed nature elicited no small amount of applause from a concerning number of misguided Maltese souls out there - exposing, once again, the hideous, racist underbelly of Maltese society.

Racism and xenophobia may be one thing, but linking those kinds of sentiments to L-Istrina was a downright despicable act. As the President of the Republic makes it perfectly clear in an interview in today's issue, L-Istrina is all about saving lives, helping people through chronic and serious illnesses such as cancer and assisting their families with the upheavals and turmoil they experience when one of their loved ones falls gravely ill.

Attacking the charity in such a way is utterly condemnable, as deplorable as the racist sentiments expressed and welcomed by many this week.

It seems that every time this country's racist elements appear to have taken a hiatus, they come crawling out from under their rock once again. But, it seems, that every time racism rears its ugly head in this country, there is hardly a single politician, at least not from either of the two leading political parties, willing to risk votes by condemning it. Is this what we have come to in this country?  Have votes become more sacred than basic humanitarian values?

Along such lines, it was disappointing that the candidate was not publically reprimanded by his party, the party in government, for his racist behaviour - and for attacking and attempting to ridicule the President, who hails from the very same political party, the Malta Community Chest Fund and L-Istrina.

But the fact of the matter is that our politicians will not react and risk losing votes until they are convinced that there are more votes to be lost by not condemning such sentiments. The vast majority of the Maltese population, we are convinced, give no quarter to such racist sentiments but the sad truth is that until they make their voices heard loud and clear, it will only be the racists and xenophobes, who tend to speak the loudest, that will be heard.

Those social media posts in question appeared to object to the integration of those who have made Malta their home, those who have been granted one form or another of international humanitarian protection.

But is it really being suggested that these people, once they are here and technically prevented from moving on to mainland Europe by the Dublin Convention, should become ghettoised, living on the margins of society and without making any sort of valid contribution to their adoptive country?

We think not, and there is certainly a great deal more work to be done here according to surveys on integration carried out by NGOs working in the field.

Integration also means a stop to discrimination, but discrimination, fostered by lack of integration, is still rampant - in employment, education, housing, health, access to goods and services, political participation, and the criminal justice system. It is in these exact areas that racism and discrimination have become accepted as the norm and where they have, in fact, become institutionalised.

These irregular migrants, in their vast majority, have found themselves here not out of personal choice but due to pure circumstance, and they have every legal right to live in this country and to have full access to and participate in all areas of society.

Long gone, at least for the time being, are the days when migrant boats would turn up on our shores on a daily basis. And apparently, also long gone are the days of Malta's far-right parties that protested so loudly about the country accommodating these asylum seekers, as though the country even had a choice in the matter considering its international obligations.

But still racism is still very much alive and kicking in Malta. And the fact that it is mostly no longer quite as open and vociferous as it once was does not mean it no longer exists; what it means is that racism has perhaps after all these years of the issue being kicked around like a political and societal football quietly permeated at least a segment of the national psyche.

On the one hand, blatant racism appears to have died down, but on the other hand it has been replaced with something else. Calls for migrant boats to be sunk with cannon fire before they reach Malta's shores are thankfully no longer heard, at least not as often as they once were, but there is a more insidious form of racism that still very much alive and kicking.

It may be spoken of mostly in more hushed tones these days, but there is still a very real sense of resentment among many toward the Africans who, not by design but by twist of fate, ended up here in Malta.

Politicians must give the populace the message that racism will not be tolerated, and failing to come down hard on an aspiring politician evoking racist sentiments is not a positive sign at all.