Pumping iron on migration: Muscat’s consistency or opportunism?

Migration was definitely not the talk of the town before last week's events. In fact there was nothing special about the number of arrivals in recent months, with the numbers still lower than those registered in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011 and 2012.

Neither has immigration brought about any sudden increase in unemployment or the crime rate, which might justify a sudden eruption of public concern.

Except for the high visibility of migrants in some localities, migration has not altered the patterns of Maltese social and cultural life or resulted in any ethnic strife on the island.

In fact one may well have started thinking that people were getting used to the arrival of an annual 1,000 to 2,000 migrants. The arrivals may justify calls for burden sharing, to alleviate logistical difficulties, but they pose no threat to the survival of the nation.

In fact a MaltaToday survey held in the first week of June, after the arrival of around 300 migrants in the first five months of the year, showed only 2% of respondents mentioning migration as one of their two main concerns.

At that stage most respondents opted for bread-and-butter issues like the cost of living, utility bills, employment and health services, thus confirming a pattern established over the past years: concern with migration rises according to the level of political angst surrounding the arrival of boats full of immigrants.

Still, it may well be the case that migration worries were simply lurking under the surface waiting to erupt. The question is whether Muscat has contributed to this eruption through his strong-arm antics or whether he is simply containing this sentiment within mainstream politics by sounding hawkish - while steering away from xenophobia and racism.

A crescendo of rhetoric

Still the evidence does seem to point at a sudden escalation in the government's migration rhetoric over the past days.

Only a week before the arrival of 290 migrants, which triggered the current crisis, the government itself - instead of sending a louder message to the European Union by voting against it - chose to abstain on the European asylum package, which had failed to include any mandatory burden sharing, in spite of the requests of the Maltese government.

This contrasted with Labour's insistence before the election that it would succeed in persuading other European countries to accept a burden-sharing agreement.

It was also a unique chance for Malta to appear strong with politicians in a context wherein migrants were not involved directly.

Moreover, although Muscat can claim that his current policies reflect the electoral mandate given to him by 55% of the electorate and consistency with the immigration platform presented to the public in 2009, immigration hardly featured in the 2013 electoral campaign, except for a direct question in which Muscat refused to rule out pushbacks.

A migration distraction?

Surely the passions riled on the migration issue in recent days contrast with the low level of tension in the previous months.

Muscat was not particularly keen on committing Sant's mistake of 1996, when he spent his first months lambasting the record of the previous government, due to fear that this could dampen the country's good sprits. In many ways since being elected, Muscat has shied away from appearing divisive - to the extent that he has been criticised for making enough political capital of the inheritance left by the previous government.

But it all changed in one dramatic week, which commenced with the International Herald Tribune's allegation that John Dalli, a former EU commissioner, had arranged a $100 million transfer to the Bahamas, ostensibly after having been informed that he was under investigation by OLAF. The news hit just a few days after Dalli's appointment as a government consultant for the reform of Mater Dei hospital.

Although this allegation was never substantiated, the Bahamas trip, which, according to Dalli, was connected to a multimillion-dollar charity project involving evangelical philanthropists, did take place when Dalli was still an EU commissioner.

Although no link was established between the Bahamas visit and OLAF's botched tobacco investigation, except for a noteworthy coincidence of dates between the investigation and Dalli's trip to the Caribbean, public opinion was shaken by the news.

The latest twist in the Dalli saga coincided with a sense of disenchantment among voters on Muscat's meritocracy pledge, which was counterbalanced by the appointment of Nationalist sympathisers like Lou Bondi on national boards, a symbolic decision which disoriented a number of Labour supporters.

A survey by MaltaToday carried during the first week of July, preceding Muscat's tough talk on immigration, showed his popularity having dropped by a further four points, though he remained 13 points more popular than Opposition Leader Simon Busuttil.

This may have prompted Muscat to jump on the anti-immigration bandwagon.

In this context the immigration distraction worked well for Muscat, as all public discussion shifted from the government's internal troubles and difficulties to the migration issue.

History is full of examples of leaders using the patriotic card in times of trouble, which drove Margaret Thatcher to fight a war in the Falklands war and, less successfully, led Nicolas Sarkozy to ditch his friend Gaddafi and intervene in Libya.  Moreover Berlusconi himself resorted to pushbacks and EU bashing to shore up support during his third term as prime minister.

But if that was indeed the tactic, why was Muscat so concerned with popularity barely 100 days after being elected with the safest majority in the country's history? Is Muscat obsessed with being liked all the time?

Some have even speculated that Muscat is simply setting the stage for next year's MEP election, wherein he could face disgruntlement among some of his supporters and possible competition from the far right.

Consistency or opportunism?

But it may also well be the case that Muscat is simply being consistent with what he promised and responding to his first migration test with the arsenal of pushbacks and vetoes, which form part of the 20-point migration plan which he explained in detail in parliament in March 2009 - a few months before the last MEP elections.

What is sure is that on Thursday, 5 July, Muscat embarked on a political offensive, calling for a press conference as a reaction to the latest boat arrival and reiterating his threat to use the veto to block EU workings while refusing to exclude the pushback of migrants.

On the following day he upped the tempo, replying to comments by European Commissioner Cecilia Malmström in a way reminiscent of comments written on online comment boards - inviting the Commissioner to have her native Sweden accept Malta's arrivals.

The die was cast for an escalation on Tuesday, with the government responding to the arrival of another boat carrying 100 potential asylum seekers by booking two Air Malta flights to deport them to Libya.

While Muscat now insists that no final decision was taken and the government was still considering all options, the timeline of events suggests that the deportation was only aborted after the European Court of Human Rights issued an injunction.

In fact Muscat himself only ruled out the pushbacks in parliament after receiving the ECHR injunction in writing.

Moreover Muscat went as far calling on NGOs to shoulder their responsibilities following the injunction. In fact Labour's attempt to silence any criticism by appealing to "national unity" and the need to present a united front in the international arena betrayed a right-wing streak lurking in Labour since the times of Dom Mintoff.

Muscat's error of judgment?

While Muscat might have banked on a surge of popular support on an issue where previous surveys show a widespread anti-immigrant sentiment, he might well have underscored the reaction of those who opposed his threat to deport 45 migrants to Libya.

He seemed to have underestimated the revulsion felt in the liberal camp and a surprisingly vibrant response by civil society, which saw artists, leaders of opinion, lawyers and academics from across the political divide taking a definitive stand. 

While there is little doubt that his hard-line message resonated with a large category of voters, with callers on PN-owned Radio 101 expressing their support for the PM, Labour faced a backlash among one of the categories with which it had flirted before the election by describing itself as the natural home for liberals.

He also seem to have discounted the impact of social media, which saw his most ardent supporters expressing themselves in crude xenophobic discourse and fraternising with the far-right crowd.

This culminated in the organisation of a protest, where genuine but misguided Labour supporters were duped into confirming their participation in an event whose logo was reminiscent of Nazi Germany, with a black Maltese cross taking the place of the swastika.

Then events started taking a life of their own, with two Arriva drivers subjected to racist attacks, episodes that suggested that the racist elements in Maltese society were clearly emboldened by the PM's tough talk.

"I am not a racist"

Ultimately Muscat did what is expected of any prime minister of a civilized country: he disassociated himself completely from the far-right protest, which ultimately failed to materialise, and condemned racism unequivocally.

Moreover Muscat did have a diplomatic back-up plan to give the impression that he was not stamping his feet in vain. First he hosted a meeting between EU Council President Herman Von Rompuy and the Libyan Deputy Prime Minister and raised the migration issue with the Italian prime minister. In itself this suggests that Muscat's immigration showdown was planned to coincide with diplomatic initiatives.

When asked by journalists about whether his actions were contributing to growing xenophobia, he made an attempt to shift popular discourse from far-right concerns on the perceived threat posed by multiculturalism to mere concern for unsustainable migration numbers.

Admittedly this was always his main concern from the moment he presented a 20-point plan on migration in 2009, which included a proposal to suspend Malta's international obligations if a still-mysterious quota was surpassed.  Even on that occasion, Muscat did express himself with a sense of ambiguity, walking on a tightrope between popular prejudice and an obsession with numbers.

In his 2009 speech, Muscat was reported saying that while Maltese society had to understand the desperation which at least some of the migrants had experienced, the migrants too needed to understand and respect the Maltese way of living and culture. According to Muscat, migrants had to understand "that women had a right to wear what they wished, that people queued for what they needed and they could not relieve themselves in public".

Muscat's 2009 remarks are similar to Home Affairs Minister Manuel Mallia's reference to migrants' antisocial behaviour in a recent MaltaToday interview.

Mallia was quite frank in saying that "there is a problem of integration. As long as new arrivals respect the culture of the host country, I don't envisage any problems. If we start seeing problems of antisocial behaviour stemming from a different way of living or culture, we are going to have problems".

As in 2009 Muscat insisted that he is in favour of integration, but only if the numbers are kept under control.

Once again Muscat is being consistent with his 2009 speech, in which he made it clear that "tolerance succeeded when numbers were within manageable limits and based on the rule of law" and that the government should establish the number of migrants which Malta could host in a suitable and sustainable manner. But while Muscat still speaks of numbers while in government, he has refrained from establishing such a quota, insisting that he would not ape the British Tories in establishing one, but forgetting that the Tories proposed a quota on non-EU foreign workers and not on asylum seekers.

Muscat's balancing act

In this way Muscat can win some brownie points with some liberals while still projecting himself as a hawkish defender of the national interest with the masses.

Possibly Muscat's effort to distance himself from the far-right could be a reaction to the firm stance of civil society against the pushbacks.

But it could also reflect Muscat's own sensibilities rooted in his deep conviction that the centre-left cannot alienate its working-class constituents by dismissing concerns on migration.

In this way he comes across as someone who shares the public's concerns, while keeping a clear distance from racist discourse.

Still his willingness to use 45 migrants as pawns in his game of brinkmanship has dented his previous commitment to be forceful with politicians and not with migrants.

The problem for Muscat is that public concern on numbers is grounded on many irrational fears, which are surely amplified by the dramatic and uncontrolled arrival of boats, but are in many instances also based on crude racism and generalisations. 

Divorcing crude racism from sheer concern for numbers is not easy because these numbers represent human beings. Another reason for Muscat's difficulty in divorcing racism from concern for numbers is that only racism can explain why the Maltese are largely keen on accepting thousands of people from other countries who come here to work, buy property or pay less tax - but draw the lines on migration from Africa.

Curiously, Muscat prides himself on making Malta a more open country for property buyers and investors. Just a few weeks before the escalation of the migration crisis, Muscat firmly warned against racism in the context of facilitating foreign investment in Malta.

Still, by pumping iron after every boat arrival, Muscat risks fuelling forces he can't himself control - something which happened to migration hawks like Nicolas Sarkozy, who tried to annihilate the far-right National Front by appearing hawkish, while distancing himself from the far-right by appointing ministers from different ethnic backgrounds. This strategy did not prevent Marine Le Pen from winning one-fifth of the votes in the 2012 presidential election.

In the end, Muscat is playing a very dangerous game, which may well get out of hand if he fails to satisfy the expectations he raised by stamping his feet on an issue where irrationality plays such a key role.