Robert Abela spent much of December and January shaking people’s hands, elbowing his way into rooms packed with hundreds of people jostling to hug him and kiss him. It’s barely been four months and the prime ministerial campaign seems from a parallel universe.

Abela inherited a wonky Malta, with an economy in downfall since last November – not because of the coronavirus but because of the virus of Joseph Muscat’s corruption.

By January, businesses were already on their knees and the country on the verge of being blacklisted internationally.

As he was shaking people’s hands in January, Abela probably thought that with Muscat away from the limelight, he could inject some love into the economy and reboot it. It was not to be.

By the time COVID-19 reached our shores in March, it could hungrily prey on a country with a very weak economic immune system – we were already clinging desperately to the ventilator.

From then on, Abela started facing daily choices. Was he going to tackle issues like his predecessor or was he going to break free from his shackles?

We badly need a prime minister different to the one we had before. We don’t need another vote-pandering, corrupt bully to run the island. We want a prime minister with a heart.

We don’t want an inhumane prime minister who allows for journalist assassination plots to take place in his office and who is happy to leave people to drown so that “Europe wakes up and smells the coffee”. We want someone to lead our children by example.

And that example has been starkly provided this week. We saw people on boats fleeing misery, torture and death and we saw them reach out their hands for help. And what did we do?

First, we closed our port. “Sorry, out of order due to coronavirus!”; and then we sent planes to locate them. “Ah, they’re in our search and rescue area, not in our territorial waters,” we said, like that absolves us from lifting a finger.

From their rubber dinghies, under three-metre high waves, the migrants reached out their hands some more.

“Please we have no water, no food. There are children here. There are people dying. Help us!”

We did nothing. Wait, we did. Our foreign minister gave a little speech taking the EU to task, asking it to fork out €100 million, thinking he was at the suq. “Give me the money now! and I’ll save the lives, if not, forget about it.”

The people on the boat, pleaded for help again. What did we do? Did we send in our experienced maritime squad trained specifically in saving lives at sea? No. We looked the other way, hands in our pockets, humming in the air, “Coronavirus! Coronavirus! Tum-di-dum, la-la-la.”

Hang on, Maltese doctors said, we cannot allow them to die in the name of public health! It’s our responsibility to save lives. We could afford to spare a few COVID-19 tests for a boatful of people and we could triage and isolate them and protect the Maltese public. It fell on deaf ears. “Coronavirus! Coronavirus! Tum-di-dum, la-la-la.”

Abela’s job is not to pander to votes, but to do what is right

Then the boat reached our territorial waters. Which means that we were obliged by law to save the people on it. What did we do? Conveniently, a commercial ship passed by and took the survivors and by then five dead migrants, on board and continued on its route to… Libya. 

Libya is the country these people had run away from, after fleeing from their country of origin and crossing an interminable perilous desert. They would have reached Libya and paid their life savings to cross the ravaging Mediterranean out of desperation.

But last Wednesday, the migrants who had hoped for a chance at a better life in Europe, ended up in the Libyan detention centres – which as many witnesses and survivors will tell you, are tantamount to torture centres.

 This is what we did. Instead of giving them a chance for a better life, we nudged them back to a place where if they won’t die there, they’ll certainly come out maimed.

And we are left to deal with grief.

Not only for the deaths and the lives these people have been denied but for our nation. Because now we are officially heartless.

Why did we not save their lives?

There’s no two ways about it: it’s the politics of the skin. If that boat were full of Italians, Americans, Greeks, Albanians, Polish, Russians, British – there would have been no hesitation whatsoever. It would have been a race over which nation would save the boats first.

But this was a boat of people coming from Libya, people of African origin, people with a different skin colour, different cultures. In short, they are the people we’re okay with to pick our rubbish. Which is why it’s been a race of which nation will keep their social distance most.

Surely, if we want to be a thriving society, then we need to nurture our children to show empathy towards one another and offer help when needed. But what example are we giving our children if we snub the vulnerable?

If that’s the lesson we’re teaching our children, then by God, we’re raising Nazis in the making.

The truth of the matter is that it is immoral to let people drown. Abela’s decision was immoral. His job is not to pander to votes, his job is to do what is right, to stand by humanity and save lives. His job is to explain this to his people and his people will back him up.

Of course, we had to close our borders because of the coronavirus. But that does not mean that we stop providing for people who need to escape persecution.

We have moved on since the time of the Great Siege. We are not a walled fortress country. We are part of a global village.

In this new era that we’re living, the prime minister’s job is not to think of the people who want to kiss him and shake his hands.

His job is to show our children that charity does not end at home. It begins at home and flourishes elsewhere.

krischetcuti@gmail.com
twitter: @krischetcuti