Foreign Affairs Minister Evarist Bartolo has started writing a sorrowful Facebook post, which he will publish tomorrow morning after five immigrants died in Malta’s search and rescue zone.
While 47 migrants were rescued by a commercial ship and taken back to Libya, another five were reportedly found dead.
“What this pandemic has shown is the importance of planning ahead and being prepared. With this in mind, I’ve already started work on tomorrow morning’s Facebook post,” Bartolo told Bis-Serjetà.
“So far I’ve got ‘Il-jum it-tajjeb lil kulħadd’. I haven’t decided on the precise contents of the rest of the post, but it’ll be in my usual meandering, navel-gazing style.
“Maybe I’ll ask a bunch of hypothetical questions – could we have done more to save them? Did we make the right choice? Why is our search and rescue area such a funny shape, like a doorstop? I won’t be providing any answers or taking responsibility, of course. That’s for other people to do.
“Or maybe I’ll make up a new number. Two days ago I said 700,000 immigrants were waiting to cross the Mediterranean. This morning I quoted the UN saying it was 300,000. I might go for a billion tomorrow, just to make spice things up.”
Bartolo said he would probably wait a few more weeks before having a full-blown Damascene moment, similar to the one he had during last year’s political crisis.
“I’ll wait for the footage of dead black people on the seafloor to emerge before writing that, in hindsight, the government made mistakes. I’m also looking forward to being interviewed by Tim Sebastian again,” he said.
“Life was so much simpler back when I only used to write about my walks in Mellieħa,” he admitted.
