Towards a common approach to migration

Reactions to last week's Council of Ministers meeting - in particular, to the outcome of discussions on how to tackle the irregular immigration phenomenon at European level - strongly suggest that Malta's failure to achieve international support on this issue may be ultimately down to our endemic culture of political antagonism: whereby the Opposition party deliberately tries to sabotage government policy at every turn, without any consideration for the national interest.

In this case, there has been a clear reversal of roles since 2008: when then opposition leader Joseph Muscat had reacted to the Asylum Immigration Pact in exactly the same way (almost using the same words) as Simon Busuttil this week reacted to government's claims of a 'victory' at European level.

The two scenarios are too uncomfortably similar to avoid comparison. In 2008, then home affairs minister Carm Mifsud Bonnici returned in triumph from Brussels to announce that Malta had secured an agreement with regard to 'responsibility sharing' (which to this day remains Malta's only discernable national policy on this issue). On that occasion Joseph Muscat poured cold water on the victory claim: rightly pointing out that the 'agreement' hailed by Mifsud Bonnici was voluntary in nature, and as such it did not bind the EU to assist in the logistical aspects of the immigration phenomenon.

Five years later, with the shoe on the other foot, it would seem that government and Opposition are still dancing to the exact same tune: a veritable danse macabre, given the backdrop of large scale loss of life against which this increasingly childish banter now takes place.

This time, it is opposition leader Simon Busuttil's turn to deflate the government's claims of having 'achieved results' in the Council of Ministers meeting: and significantly, the Nationalist leader echoed Muscat's 2008 arguments almost to the letter.

Government, he said, has "returned empty-handed" from Brussels - almost the identical accusation leveled by the Labour opposition in 2008, and consistently throughout the last five years.

The tone of Busuttil's reaction today contrasts sharply with the same Busuttil's response to the Immigration Pact of 2008. Back then, the future PN leader said: "This is an important step forward in a matter where we have been facing resistance for years. Getting other countries to take immigrants from us when they all have their own problems was never going to be easy. So this is an important breakthrough."

On closer scrutiny, however, the 'breakthrough' in 2008 turned out to be no breakthrough at all. As anti-immigration pundits tirelessly remind government, the number of refugees to have been voluntary resettled by EU member states remains minuscule; and the pact itself only concerns the resettlement of refugees... making no allowance whatsoever for a large contingent of failed asylum seekers.

On the other side of this unbridgeable political gap, Prime Minister Joseph Mucat appears to have forgotten his own criticism of the same 2008 asylum pact, which he then claimed had failed to secure a mandatory agreement. From this perspective: how can the same Muscat now praise the outcome of a council of minister's meeting, when the desired 'mandatory' resettlement  agreement remains as elusive today as it has always been?

What we are witnessing is in a sense a dramatic confirmation of the inability of our country's political forces to put aside their petty differences, even on issues where there is palpable national fatigue and disillusionment. The implications are extremely worrying. Given the grueling defeat suffered by the PN at the last election, one would have expected the incoming leader to take stock of the national mood, and to at least try to break with a tradition of automatic, knee-jerk antagonism that has clearly exasperated the wider population.

As for Joseph Muscat, he ought to be cognisant of the unreasonable expectations of political reform that he himself helped to raise before the last election. Yet all we have seen since the election of Muscat to PM (and, separately, Busuttil to Opposition leader) is a straight continuation of failed policies, which in time serve only to underscore a growing sense of helpnessness in a country that has clearly been hijacked by two political parties locked in a endless tug of war, with little consideration for the longer term prospects of the country as a whole.

And yet, if there was ever an issue on which the two political forces in the country should at least try to converge, it surely has to be irregular migration. On paper there is no reason why government and opposition cannot meet each other halfway on this issue, and to at least try to present a united front in the face of evident indifference at European level.

The only explanation for the two parties' failure to do so is that both these parties are simply incapable of resisting the impulse to score cheap political points: in this case, by capitalising on a widespread anti-immigration sentiment to raise the heat on an issue which could conceivably have serious social repercussions.

To persist with this archaic and manifestly counter-productive way of doing politics is not only disappointing on the part of both leaders. It is also grossly irresponsible.