Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/195525
21 Opinion maltatoday, SUNDAY, 20 OCTOBER 2013 to instantly ingratiate oneself with a public that has been shouting its own xenophobia from the rooftops for years. We have seen this time and again in the context of politics. Is your party going through a tough time? Has it just lost an election by a massive margin, and still doesn't know where it to even begin rebuilding its shattered image? Never fear, you can always win a few instant brownie points just by plugging into the national racist, anti-immigration sentiment… say, by insisting that those 120 Syrian asylum seekers rescued from certain death by the AFM this week should have been taken to Lampedusa, because (let's face it) we don't want any more filthy, pesky foreigners mixing with our nice Maltese children, thank you very much… And just to round off the possibilities: maybe this same Maltese justice, as seen by a foreigner Oh no: it is now the official sentencing policy of the Maltese law courts to consider a foreign nationality as an aggravating factor that can automatically elevate a 'petty' crime to a 'serious' one… with all the implications this entails. Which brings me to the truly scary aspect to what would otherwise be (let's face it) the stuff of comedy. OK, so we already know from past rulings that this particular magistrate is prone to this sort of thing anyway. And we also know that the underlying situation can't really be helped: no matter how blatantly and selfevidently unsuited to the job any given magistrate may turn out to be, our half-baked Constitution doesn't actually allow for the possibility of his or her removal… (other than by a two-thirds parliamentary majority which, in our politically immature country, is another way of saying 'never'). These issues are known to one and all, and they occasionally resurface as talking points to be discussed ad nauseam by such entities as the Chamber of Advocates, the Justice Reform Commission and others. But what about everybody else? What about the ordinary man in the street, who is so often on the receiving end of often equally absurd court decisions? Why does everybody just accept a situation whereby the rule of law – i.e., quite possibly the single most important aspect to any civilisation, without which we would be the ones risking our lives on the next boat to Lampedusa – is constantly threatened and undermined by the idiocies of a justice system that has evidently forgotten all about the 'justice' part of its own job description? I don't know the answer myself, but (as usual) I think I can make a pretty damn cunning guess. I think it is actually the entire country – and not just its law courts or the occasional individual magistrate – that is so severely xenophobic, it simply no longer recognises injustices when the affected parties are not Maltese. And there is a possibility (though I am the first to admit that this is cynical conjecture on my part) that this widespread sentiment may be exploited by certain institutions to boost their own flagging credibility or popularity at street level. In many cases, 'attacking the foreigner' is a deliberate, tried-and-tested ploy sentiment is actually correct all along. Who knows? Maybe the Maltese really are a special, magical race who should by rights be spared from the hassle of having to rub shoulders with (jaqq!) niggers, wops, chinks and all other such undesirables. And by this same reasoning… maybe we do deserve to be treated using a different yardstick from all other nationalities under the sun, and to be judged according to a different code of laws. This, in a nutshell, is the ultimate wet dream of Malta's increasingly strident neo-fascist community. But like all wet dreams, the dreamer inevitably wakes up in the end… only to find that things have meanwhile got (how can I put this?) a little messy. In this case, the mess is created by the following, undeniable fact. Even if we accept all the above possibilities and more… it doesn't for a second change the fact that Malta has only one Criminal Code. And by its own legal definitions, this code is equally applicable to all human beings, regardless of the nationality inscribed in their passport. [Note: before everyone jumps on me to point out that there ARE provisions in the law that apply differently to foreigners – those tend to be in the civil, not criminal, code]. Nor does any of the above alter the underlying principle upon which our entire justice system is supposed to be built: the one we all saw written on the walls of the Italian courts when following the televised 'maxi-processo' of Sicilian Mafiosi in the days of Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. Remember? 'La Legge E' Uguale Per Tutti'? ('The law is equal for all')? Now: unless there was some small print in there that none of us ever noticed… possibly along the lines that "some nationalities are more 'uguali' than others"… that means that the justice meted out by Magistrate Peralta is also equal for foreigners in a Maltese court: and while I'm at it, for the entire population of Mellieha, too. I guess no one ever got round to informing Magistrate Peralta, that's all. CHECK OUT RAPHAEL VASSALLO'S LATEST COLUMNS ON http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/en/blogs