Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1476751
10 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 21 AUGUST 2022 NEWS CARMELO Mifsud Bonnici, who was Home Affairs Minis- ter under the Gonzi adminis- tration, recalls with trepidation the squabbles with the Italian government of the time over migration and wrangling on who should take responsibility for saving lives. Now he warns that a government across the channel that is led by the hard- right could mean "a lot of time consumed in playing puerile games" over responsibilities for rescuing people whose lives are at risk. He is convinced that if Giorgia Meloni becomes Italian prime minister, far-right leader Mat- teo Salvini will insist on getting the home affairs ministry. And he attributes this state of affairs to the "disappearance of the centre-right" which was largely supplanted at a national level by Meloni's post-MSI party Fratel- li d'Italia, and Salvini's Lega. Former foreign minister Evarist Bartolo also shares this sentiment, even if according him this outcome depends on whether Libya is able to contain the flows of migration emanat- ing from its coast. "If Matteo Salvini becomes Interior Minis- ter, Italy will take a tougher line on immigration," Bartolo says, but he does not see Malta be- coming inevitably "the weakest link on the EU's southern bor- ders" with the migration flow diverted from Lampedusa to Malta. Bartolo, who as foreign min- ister focused on strengthening relations with Libya, thinks pressure will grow on Malta, but much also depends on the departure points of the outflow from Libya and "our indispen- sable cooperation with the Lib- yan Coast Guards". But Bartolo also contends that the only long term solution is a building a new relationship with the African continent. "It is in Malta and Italy's and the EU's common interest to re- mind other member states that by 2050, the 54 African coun- tries will have a total popula- tion of 2.5 billion, mostly young people seeking jobs. "Therefore it is in the interest of both neighbouring countries to work together on develop- ment, peace, climate change, energy, and 'regular migration' channels, as well as building new regional supply and value chains through near-shoring and a culture to create wealth and jobs for people not to have to migrate to seek a bet- ter life." Chronicles of a crisis fore- told Migration is surely one of the major planks of the Italian hard right which now dom- inates the alliance with the centre-right. While Salvini promises to reintroduce dra- conian security decrees and laws criminalising both asy- lum seekers and rescue mis- sions, Meloni is proposing a "naval blockade" enforced by the European Union to stop all boat departures from Lib- ya. Yet it remains very doubtful whether such a measure will be endorsed by other mem- ber states, considering the implications on international law. And while this could well be a slogan aimed at boosting elec- toral support in the battle for the dominance of the right, only to be toned down by the realities of governing a country firmly anchored in the Europe- an Union, any government led by Meloni or Salvini will inevi- tably have to give its electorate a piece of flesh. In such a scenario, Meloni may well blame the EU for refusing the enforce the blockade and close Italian ports to migrants as had happened on previous occasions when the right was in government. This is bound to strain the country's relationship with Malta. In fact, historically cordial relations between Italy and Malta were only disrupted by stand-offs on migration which mostly occurred during the two periods during which Italy had shifted to the right: first during the Berlusconi government be- tween 2008 and 2011, when the anti-immigrant Lega Nord was still a junior partner of the more mainstream Forza Italia; and in the brief populist interlude between 2018 and 2019, when Matteo Salvini was Minister for Home Affairs in an uneasy coa- JAMES DEBONO How Meloni's victory could increase Malta's migration woes On September 25, Italy goes to the polls with Giorgia Meloni's conservative Fratelli d'Italia – whose emblem carries the tricolor f lame of the post-fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano – set to clinch power in an alliance with Matteo Salvini's Lega. MaltaToday catches up with former foreign minister Evarist Bartolo and former interior minister Carm Mifsud Bonnici, on how this could impact on Malta The contenders The centre-left Democratic Party (PD) – a party rooted in both the euro communist and Christian democratic tradition (Letta himself started his mili- tancy with the Christian Dem- ocrats) may still emerge as Ita- ly's largest party. The polls put it at par with Meloni's Brothers of Italy. But it has only managed to secure an agreement with the left, the greens and Emma Bon- ino's More Europe movement. Bonino, a former foreign min- ister and tireless civil rights campaigner, stood out during her tenure in office for her fo- cus on development goals in Africa. The centre-left is united by a pledge to introduce a decent minimum wage and is dis- tinctly more socially liberal, supporting the legalisation of cannabis and the granting of citizenship to children born in Italy. And while the centre-left is poised to lose, it may well re- cover a sense of purpose erod- ed by its involvement in ideo- logically disparate coalitions often led by technocrats like the bankers Mario Draghi and Mario Monti, which turned off many on the left from politics. The populist M5S, which vaguely leans towards the left, has chosen to run on its own, thus avoiding an internal rift. The party had emerged as Ita- ly's lagest party in 2018 but has since then lost support after supporting three different co- alition arrangements: first with the Lega, then with the PD and finally the transversal Draghi government. Matteo Renzo, who back- stabbed compromise PM En- rica Letta in 2014 to become PM, and Carlo Calenda, who formed his own party after splitting from the PD, have