Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1037099
25 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 7 OCTOBER 2018 OPINION 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 us in 20 years' time (provided they both still exist… which is beginning to look rather doubtful). In what mysterious ways will they both totally and utterly contradict their present positions? And what sort of sense would their new political platforms make, when viewed against their current socio- political backdrop? Ask that question about Delia's newfound aversion to foreigners today, and… um… I'm at a loss, to tell you the truth. If any of you can see any rhyme or reason in any of it, feel free to enlighten me. Let's start with the fact that – apart from contradicting the PN's former position… at a time, please note, when the PN was an unstoppable political force in its own right – Adrian Delia also tends to contradict himself, sometimes from one sentence to the next. At the same GWU conference where he made all the bizarre claims quoted above… he also concluded that: "if the country had to bring in foreign work- ers, they should at least be from the European Union". Huh? What? Just a few sentences earlier, Delia had argued that 'foreigners' were somehow increasing air pollu- tion, and having a measurable impact on Malta's depression, anxiety and stress rates. So… are we suddenly to understand that it's only third-country nationals who have all these unpleasant effects? That – miraculously – a car driven by the holder of a Polish or Austrian passport (who, for all we know, could just as easily be originally from Pakistan or Brazil anyway), causes less pollution than a car driven by a Nigerian, Syrian or Filipino national? Or even, for that matter, a non-EU European citizen? (They do exist, you know: look under 'Norway' or 'Switzerland' for further details.) More worryingly still: is Adrian Delia suggesting that people get more 'depressed', 'anxious or 'stressed out' by the presence of black or Asian immigrants in their neighbourhoods… than when surrounded by nice, shiny and suitably white 'EU nationals'? If so, Delia will find that… yes, there are numerous people in Malta who do share his clearly neurotic concerns. But they're not the type who have ever traditionally sup- ported the PN before. Nor have they any reason to do so now. No, the blatantly racist demographic is already amply catered for by Malta's more overtly and ideologically anti- immigration parties… like the Ghaqda Patrijotti Maltin, or Norman Lowell's Imperium Europe (which has just an- nounced it will be contesting next year's MEP elections). Not that it's a choice I will ever have to make myself; but if I were to base my own voting intentions only on visceral hatred for foreigners… I would certainly not waste it on a Johnny-Come-Lately like Adrian Delia (whose party was responsible for most of this influx anyway… precisely by making it legal for foreigners to come here to live and work in the first place). No, I would cast my vote for a professional immigrant-basher like Nor- man Lowell, who has a long and spectacularly consist- ent record in that particular department. The same goes for the candi- dates who are echoing Delia's anti-foreigner rhetoric further down the PN food-chain. Like Dione Borg, for instance: who kickstarted his own MEP campaign by warning about 'immigrants' opening shops in places like Hamrun and Marsa (as opposed to sleep- ing in cardboard boxes on the street, which is what he would presumably prefer). "One of the main changes in Hamrun and Marsa is that previously Maltese-owned businesses are being taken over by immigrants. Undoubt- edly this affects the communi- ties here," Dione recently said in a video blog… while stand- ing outside a Hamrun food shop called 'Taste of Africa'. Well, oddly enough I was in Hamrun myself this morning, and I happened to walk past that particular shop (and many others like it) on my way back. Around three doors further up the same street, there's a small eatery named 'Sapori di Sicilia – Cucina Italiana': one of around half a million Italian-owned restaurants and cafes within a radius of around half a mile. And that's just Hamrun. In my own neighbourhood – Gzi- ra/Ta' Xbiex/Msida – nearly all the restaurants and bars are now foreign-owned. Mostly Italian, but by no means exclusively. There is a Serbian eatery, a Korean restaurant, two Chinese takeaways, three Indian restaurants, any num- ber of Turkish kebab houses, and at least one Asian food market… and if you enter any of these establishments at any time of day, you will find that most of the patrons are just as foreign as the people behind the counter: mostly employees of around three dozen, equally 'foreign-owned' betting agen- cies that have also taken over the entire area in the past few years. Strangely, I have never seen Dione Borg standing outside any of those 'foreign-owned businesses', complaining about the 'effect' they must surely have on local communities. Which is odd, because these same businesses – especially the betting companies – have had an infinitely greater impact on 'local communities' than any number of shops or restaurants opened by African immigrants in the same area. Why do you think the cost of renting an apartment in Gzira – previously considered a 'cheap' area – has skyrocketed by something like 5000% in recent years? Is it: (a), because a couple of refugees from Somalia or the Ivory Coast happened to open a take-away further down the street? Or is it (b), because of an entirely new contingent of 'immigrants' – mostly white, and from other parts of Europe – who com- mand much higher salaries than most Maltese workers have ever dreamed of? Hmm, what a difficult question… But perhaps the most press- ing thing to ask both Dione Borg and Adrian Delia at this stage is… well, what do you propose to do about this 'foreign influx', anyway? It was a question Mintoff could certainly answer in the 1970s… even if some us didn't like the answer at the time, and would like it a lot less today. So I guess the real question is whether today's PN is ready to back up all its tough anti- foreign talk with equally anti- foreign policies, of the kind it had itself fought against so hard (and so successfully) 40 years ago or more. If it does, its metamorpho- sis into Old Labour will be complete; and I need hardly add that what didn't work for Old Labour in the long term, is a lot less likely to work for the Nationalist Party today. But still, it's Delia's party, not mine. And like I said earlier: this may all be part of a grand political strategy that I'm just not clever enough to under- stand…