A few weeks ago Lassana Cisse, a Ghanaian living and working regularly in Malta, was shot in the head in a drive-by shooting. The evidence thus far strongly indicates that he was not hit by a stray or accidental bullet. He was not the tragic consequence of some stupid game gone horribly wrong. This death was not a result of some personal conflict.
Lassana was shot because he was black, the otherness of his skin sufficient to obliterate his personality, his beliefs and hopes. To his cold-blooded killers, Lassana was just another Black, Iswed maħmuġ, undifferentiated from other vermin.
Lassana had the thoughtlessness to get shot a couple of months before the European Parliament and local council elections. How else can one explain that neither major political party expressed any outrage whatsoever, nay barely mentioned the fact right after the crime?
And please, don’t give me bull about waiting for investigations before pronouncing themselves. They did not exactly wait for the outcome of investigations when Police Officer Simon Schembri was run over in Luqa a year ago. Then, widespread outrage propelled the authorities to front a national demonstration organised in a matter of days in solidarity with police officers who suffer in the line of duty. And rightly so.
In any functioning democracy, the first murder with clear racist overtones would have moved politicians to show solidarity at the very least, and condemn even if in the conditional. In a functioning democracy, politicians would have weighed the need for due caution against the need to state one’s values unequivocally, that this was not the new normal. Even more so in the light of rising nativist xenophobia across the globe.
For sheer eloquence, none have bested Archbishop Scicluna’s donation to Lassana’s family
Not in Malta. Apart from the laying of flowers by the usual suspects, nothing. And, after all, our politicians were reading the national mood well. Even after Lassana’s murder, Imperium Europa is now the third largest political party in Malta. Anyone who is dismissing Norman Lowell as an ageing clown is sadly mistaken. There are too many examples in Europe of young, telegenic far-right politicians taking over the reins from the first generation of leaders and riding on to victory.
It is true that when the police, with commendable efficiency, did catch the likely culprits who initially confessed to this race-hate crime, the politicians finally spoke up. But only Prime Minister Muscat set the right tone of outrage and solidarity, and I publicly and privately supported him for it. Now many will say that it was all political opportunism, and the nauseating tokenism of having a black teenager fronting the last days prior to the elections underlined this view.
But I wish to think that there was a genuine note in Muscat’s voice. While he may have calculated that the far-right voters were not in his paddock anyway, and that his outrage would sound sweet in Europe, he did not really need to go all the way he did.
Ultimately his sincerity will be measured not by his words or theatrical gestures, but by concrete action. For sheer eloquence, none have yet bested Archbishop Scicluna’s donation to Lassana’s family. Now that the election dust is settling, government must swiftly create or reinforce State and civil society structures that promote the trans-ethnic solidarity Muscat spoke about. It must take the lead in forging a new consensus across society that Lassana’s death must never, ever be repeated.
Minister Herrera’s immediate disapproval of Maurice Mizzi, the so-called Guardian of the Racist Galaxy, set the right tone. Mercifully, we were spared the pitiful excuse that Mizzi’s opinion was just “in his personal capacity”. Herrera must now follow up his words with action and send Mizzi packing.
May Delia leave please?
Birds do it; bees do it; even educated fleas do it, wrote the immortal Cole Porter over 90 years ago. In our context, Theresa May did it; Godfrey Farrugia did it; even Patrijotti’s Henry Battistino did it. Staring down at the crater gouged by their failed political leadership that imploded their respective parties, they took responsibility for defeat and opted to jump rather than be pushed.
Not only is it more elegant. There is a certain dignity in the pathos of the political self-erasure of failed leaders in the hope that their party might be free of their legacy and rise again. Their final act elicits not only relief but even a grudging admiration from their opponents that, in the end, they could ‘man up’.
Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, with Delia the post-elections message was: ‘Up yours, man.’ That man has as much political dignity as I have tofu in my lasagna (the horror). As much self-awareness of his responsibilities of office as a three-year-old peeing behind his mother’s skirt. As much gravitas as a gravy boat.
Imagine if after the 2011 Fukushima disaster, the Japanese PM had said: “Well, we fared better than if we were to be hit by a meteorite…” That’s the level of numb disbelief on hearing Clyde Puli console the faithful that the EU electoral result was better than the predictions.
It does not even qualify as scraping the bottom of the barrel. It’s knocking out the bottom and using it to start a raging fire.
If those who have at heart the Nationalist Party and its past and future role in a democratic Malta do not move decisively to persuade or push the current Delia leadership to move on, we may well have to contemplate a post-PN political scenario.
This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece