You need to get your boat moving. But the waters are turgid, sluggish. So, you open the floodgates and unleash a torrent to push your boat along. The furious rush of water gets you where you need to be. But then the water keeps flowing fast, too strong to close the floodgates. It’s impossible to stem the tidal forces you’ve unleashed.
This may be what’s happening to Jean Paul Sofia’s family. Having tapped into the simmering fury of countless Maltese people at the island’s unbridled and uncontrolled construction boom, they may now want to rein that fury in because they’ve got a public inquiry into their son’s death.
They appeared uncomfortable with the rage directed at the prime minister just after their Monday vigil, a rage that erupted when the government initially rejected their impassioned pleas for the inquiry, which public support then won for them. But the outrage was not for Jean Paul alone. To use another metaphor, his tragic death was the spark that ignited an explosion blasting the entire ecosystem that allowed it to happen.
A self-serving, compromised and toothless ecosystem that puts money above safety. An ecosystem that tolerates escalating numbers of construction permits, including many dodgy ones, deaf to environmental concerns. An ecosystem that watches dumbly as walls crumble on building sites, as workers fall from dizzying heights, as construction cowboys keep getting away with murder.
An ecosystem that condemns us to coexist with a ridiculous number of cranes dotting our skyline and blocking our roads, destroying our island beyond all remedy and belief. The government is far from the only entity responsible for this travesty – we all need to question the extent of our own complicity in the development frenzy gripping our island – but it bears the lion’s share.
So, yes, shame on you, prime minister and on your acolytes who took the cowardly collective choice to put construction cowboys before the people you swore to serve when you took your positions of political power. Don’t insult our intelligence by pretending you did a
U-turn because it conveniently dawned on you that the magistrate was sleeping on the job. No, you belatedly realised you’d made a massive political blunder and scrambled to pick up the pieces.
Shame on you for all you should have done and didn’t do, for allowing the construction cowboys to continue operating in a culture of impunity, with hardly any deterrents for those who ignore the rules. Shame on you for not taking more vigorous steps to hold them accountable for the harms of their excesses. Shame on you for enabling the exploitation of migrant and refugee workers.
Like Jean Paul’s family, I unequivocally don’t approve of flying bottles, of abusive name-calling or any kind of violence. The end doesn’t justify the means. But I do agree with showing the government that enough is enough.
I hope the floodgates remain wide open, to allow the torrent of public indignation to flow, to “let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24). Each one of us urgently needs to keep pressuring the government to act.
The measure of our common decency is how much we look after the ‘least’ among us- Danielle Vella
Even though refugees and migrants account for most injuries and fatalities on construction sites, their mothers are not here to fight heroically for them, as Isabelle Bonnici is fighting for Jean Paul. Each one of the victims could have been our sons, just as much as Jean Paul.
Vaclav Havel, a moral giant who was a political prisoner under the Czech communist regime before becoming the country’s first president under democratic rule, used to say that the “litmus test” of the decency of his nation was how they treated their Roma minority. This was because the Roma, so-called gypsies, were stigmatised and discriminated against.
Similarly, the measure of our common decency is how much we look after the ‘least’ among us and how far we accord equality to victims of injustice.
If we respond with the same sustained outrage as we did for Jean Paul every time someone is killed on a construction site because of alleged criminal negligence without anyone being held accountable, then Jean Paul would not have died in vain. This is the greatest yearning of his parents, whose stated cause is no more deaths on construction sites.
In our collective conscience, Jean Paul’s death is already intricately tied up with all the other needless deaths. For all we know, if we had responded more vigorously when others were killed, if we had paid more attention when one more migrant was injured or killed on a construction site, then Jean Paul would still be alive today.
Remember Havel’s premise: The government has failed the litmus test of protecting vulnerable refugee and migrants. Don’t expect it to behave decently with the rest of us.
When push comes to shove, experience has shown that the government will treat everyone in the same way it treats the ‘least’ of us, unless self-interest dictates otherwise.
When we allow the rights of others to be compromised, we compromise our own. See the post-war statement of German pastor Martin Niemöller:
“First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.”
Danielle Vella is director of JRS International Reconciliation Programme.