Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1037099
24 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 7 OCTOBER 2018 OPINION Raphael Vassallo Bashing foreigners, are we? How very Mintoffian… I'VE often started articles with the observation that 'history repeats itself'. Only sometimes, it repeats itself in the most bizarre ways imaginable. One recent example is the Nationalist Party's sudden aversion to 'foreigners'. I have lost count of the number of times Adrian Delia has stood on a podium, and solemnly de- clared that 'foreigners' repre- sent a 'threat to our traditional way of life'… or to quote from his latest, completely inexpli- cable tirade, that the 'foreign influx' is indirectly responsible for Malta's soaring asthma rates, "as a result of increased car exhaust pollution". Erm… personally, I was una- ware that only foreigners were allowed to drive vehicles in Malta. (It certainly doesn't look that way, whenever I'm stuck in traffic behind a giant truck with the words 'Evlis is King' emblazoned on the chassis.) But then again, this is actually one of Delia's less alarming complaints about 'foreigners' these days. It's not just that they're poisoning our lungs be- cause of all the cars they drive; they're also "one of the reasons why depression, anxiety and stress have increased in recent years." OK, perhaps it's part of some ingenious political master- strategy that I'm just too stupid to understand. But from where I'm sitting, it sounds a whole lot like a direct echo of Old Labour in the days of Dom Mintoff and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici. (You know, the sort of thing we once voted PN to get rid of…) With two crucial differences, however. In the first instance, slogans like 'Malta L-Ewwel U Qabel Kollox' did indeed pay spectacular dividends some 40 or 50 years ago…. largely because Malta was still emerg- ing from its colonial shell, and 'attacking the foreigner' was still an ever-dependable way of drumming up instant grass- roots support among a para- noid population. In second place, Old Labour's unbridled xenophobia in those days was not an isolated, spur- of-the-moment phenomenon. It was part of an entire ideolog- ical package that also included – among many other things – an analogous protectionist mindset: seeking to boost local industry by simply banning foreign products altogether. It was not just 'the foreigner' that was targeted by simi- larly inflammatory rhetoric back then, but 'foreign-ness' in general. And for better or worse, the xenophobic mental- ity of the 1970s and 1980s fit neatly into a political narrative that made a lot of sense in its time… and also shaped Malta's entire economy (not to men- tion national identity) all the way until 1987. Ah, that's the thing… until 1987, when the Nationalist Party came into power on the promise to 'open up' Maltese markets to foreign competi- tion; and, later, to join the European Union… which is in turn based partly on the 'free- dom of movement of people'. In case you ever wondered what that meant… well, it's basically that foreigners would be allowed to come here, buy property and open up their own businesses (just as we can do in other member states): the same thing that the current PN leader suddenly seems to think is the main cause of all this country's problems. Hence the spectacular irony that now opens up around us on two diametrically opposed fronts. On one hand, the same Labour Party that had opposed EU accession tooth and nail – primarily because it would flood Malta with foreigners (remember all the scare-stories about 'an invasion of Sicilian hairdressers'?) - is now so en- thusiastic about foreign labour, that it feels we need to import at least another 50,000 workers from overseas. On the other, we have the same Nationalist Party that once campaigned to open Malta up to a 'foreign influx', now complaining about all the foreigners who flocked here precisely because of the suc- cess of its own campaign. It's almost as though the PN and PL have agreed between them to simply swap ideologies and political platforms: Adrian De- lia has adopted Mintoff's 1970s anti-foreigner rhetoric; and Joseph Muscat has borrowed Eddie Fenech Adami's pro-EU vision, and made it his own. Makes you wonder what the same two parties will be telling