Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1545062
16 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 24 MAY 2026 OPINION THREE moments from this campaign tell us something un- comfortable about the country we are choosing to be. The first: At the university debate hosted by MUDU and KSU, Robert Abela and Alex Borg agreed without hesitation that there should be no second mosque in Malta and no place for the Quran in our schools. Days earlier, Islamic Solidarity Malta had quietly withdrawn its Luqa application after the local council, led by the economy minister's father, voted unani- mously against it. The reason- ing offered by the two leaders was disarmingly simple—there is already a mosque in the cen- tre of Malta. That mosque, in Paola, has a capacity of 500. Its community leaders say Friday worshippers spill onto the sur- rounding streets. The second: When Omar Ra- babah, a Maltese citizen, social worker, and equality activist, announced he would contest the election, a wave of racial and religious abuse followed online. Robert Abela defended him, but the defence was questiona- ble. The prime minister did not say that a Maltese citizen has every right to stand for office and that his religion is no one's business. He said that Rababah was born in a Maltese hospital, that his grandfather was Frans il-Bloqq, that his wife is the daughter of Pawlu taż-Żebgħa, that his three children are bap- tised Catholics. The bigots had set the test that to be acceptable in Maltese public life you must look and worship a certain way and the defence accepted the test. It only argued that Raba- bah passes it. The third: The proposed €1,000 annual workers' bonus, presented as a flagship policy by the Labour Party, was care- fully drawn to exclude anyone who has not lived in Malta for five years. The prime minister has been candid about the le- gal architecture that makes this exclusion possible. The bonus is not means-tested. It is res- idence-tested. A Maltese mil- lionaire qualifies; a Filipino care worker who has paid tax here for four years does not. Each of these can perhaps be defended on its own narrow terms. A planning objection here, a sloppy comment thread there, a perfectly legal eligibili- ty rule somewhere else. But the pattern is clear. We are watch- ing two major parties converge not on a vision of fairness, but on the principle that the major- ity gets to dictate the terms of belonging for everyone else. This is not how stable, decent societies are built. It is, in fact, exactly how every European country now wrestling with en- trenched ethnic and religious fault lines began. The lesson from France, from the Nether- lands, from parts of Germany and Britain is not that "multi- culturalism doesn't work". It is that multiculturalism cannot work when it is broken by de- sign and when one community is told, repeatedly and through both word and policy, that its presence is conditional, its worship fallacious, and its rep- resentation in public life is an imposition. And here is where the empir- ical question matters, because the standard reply is that none of this is permanent since for- eign workers come and go. Malta has just lived through the most dramatic demograph- ic shift of any country in the European Union. The share of non-nationals in our popula- tion rose from 7% in 2014 to 28% in 2024 and yet the consol- ing story is that this is a pass- ing phase. There is something to that story. Research by the Central Bank of Malta has con- sistently shown that the average length of stay of a foreign work- er is around three and a half years, and that only about 30% are still engaged in the Maltese labour market more than six years after they first arrive. The system is designed for transi- ence. But the same data tells a quiet- er, more important story. At the 2021 Census, more than 25,000 people born outside the EU had already been resident in Malta for seven years or more. Over 14,000 had been here for twelve years or more. The much larg- er cohort that arrived between 2015 and 2019, standing at al- most 45,000 people on Census night, has by now also crossed the five-year mark. Many will have left; many have not. They are care workers and bus driv- ers, mechanics and nurses, par- ents of children who have only ever known Malta as home. And what has the state of- fered them, in legal terms, after years of work and tax contri- butions? To be recognised by Malta as a long-term resident a third-country national must clear several bars. They must show stable income, hold sick- ness insurance, secure appro- priate accommodation, com- plete a 100-hour 'I Belong' course on Maltese society and history, and pass a Maltese lan- guage exam. At the end of 2024, the number of third-country nationals in Malta who had cleared all of this stood at 1,567. And even when they do pass the test they cannot vote at all. A Romanian who arrived last month can vote on park- ing and waste collection in the town they live in. An Albanian nurse who has paid tax here for 15 years cannot. In 2018, a Cabinet position paper merely proposing to study giving long- term third-country residents the right to vote in local council elections was, Malta Today re- ported at the time, shot down by a majority of ministers. One reportedly asked whether "we wanted an African mayor in Marsa." There is a humanist case for getting this right, and there is a self-interested one, and they happen to agree. Societies that exclude do not become more cohesive; they become more brittle and turbulent. They gen- erate exactly the resentment, withdrawal, and parallel com- munities that the exclusion was supposedly meant to prevent. We have decades of European evidence on this, and we are choosing not to learn from it. A second mosque will not un- make Malta. A bonus paid to a four-year resident will not un- make Malta. A Muslim candi- date on a ballot sheet, defended robustly not reluctantly will not unmake Malta. What might unmake it is the slow accumulation of small re- fusals agreed across the aisle, until a generation of our neigh- bours quietly concludes that the country will never really be the safe home, they believed it would, and should, be. Christian Colombo & Joanna Onions Built to exclude The authors are Humanists Malta committee members The leaders of parties contesting the 2026 general election face in the KSU's general election debate (Photo: Daniel Tihn/ MaltaToday)