Or copycat. On Sunday Robert Abela had a brainwave.
Speaking at a party activity at Zebbug, he announced that later this week Cabinet will discuss a new initiative that will only allow people to enter Malta if they are truly needed.
The government has already taken steps to curb the number of food couriers and taxi drivers entering Malta as the market had become 'saturated' and people were entering 'uncontrollably', he said.
The new policy will aim to strike a 'balance' - a new Abela mantra this - so that Malta is not 'burdened' with too many foreign workers and this is balanced with sustainable growth.
Instead of seeking growth, as we were seeking in the past years, we will henceforth be aiming at 'economic development'.
Instead of aiming at GDP growth we will be focusing on improving the quality of life - delivering better health services, more green spaces, better road infrastructure and traffic management, a stronger education system.... As if there is really an alternative to choose.
It would have been great if it were so, but then Abela deflated all he had been saying by adding "we are going to undertake a study ..."
So that's what all this Sunday rhetoric was leading to - a study, another study. As if we don't have enough studies to last a lifetime. Phew! Almost believed that. Now we can get back to making hay while the sun's shining.
Robert Abela must have been following the news and could see that blaming all woes on migrants was what put Donald Trump in the White House. And sustained Viktor Orban and Giorgia Meloni in office. So blaming it all on the migrants produces dividends.
We had no doubt about it - Malta is now under a Right Wing government. A knee-jerk one that mouths mantras but then is impotent to take the first step, and if it does anything it gets it wrong.
Like Meloni sending asylum seekers to a camp in Albania. Like Starmer and his predecessor doing the same and sending asylum seekers to a camp in Uganda. Like Trump Mark One building a wall on the frontier with Mexico.
In other words you can see where Abela is getting his ideas from. (No, I do not expect to get a consultant's package for this free advice).
This "kick the migrants out" is good for winning elections but does it do the job? And is it fair and just?
There is the global picture but let's take the local one.
Fact I: Malta's size can take so much density but not more, even though we've breached the limits time and again.
The crowded highways anytime there's rain, or a convention like Sigma and the absolute absence of order on the roads are very costly - on time wasted, on nerves, on road rage.
To keep cars coming in without any sort of compensatory removal of old vehicles means ensuring logjam at almost all hours of the day.
We were told that spending €700 million on the roads would lead to spending less time getting from A to B. Tell that to the countess thousands fuming behind the wheel.
Fact 2. Abela has only one priority - keeping his friends happy. So all doors are open to help his friends, cost what it may. So we will get the mammoth DB, the Villa Rosa as the previous lot gave us the Hilton and Mercury. And countless apartment blocks both in Malta and in Gozo.
The countryside has disappeared and the little that remains is fast changing to goat cheese farms or Areas of Containment that have become parking lots for cars and boats, industrial enterprises and so on.
Fact number 3. Abela has no intention of being tied to measurable targets. How many incoming tourists are sustainable? How many asylum seekers are sustainable? And how many have been kicked out? And what timelines?
It's all spin, knee-jerk to what's has been on the news.
Don't get me wrong. As I see it Abela and his present minister for health deserve a medal for finally closing down that monument of shame that was Karen Grech Hospital (my last memories are a ward with 22 patients with just one shower between them and a toilet straight from a Gulag).
There's so much to do for anyone. And he spends it on spin. His ministers likewise - any news bulletin is on more spend and spend. Hardly anyone speaks of sustainability. They're on a different hymnbook from past years.
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