Malta is not a good place to be a woman

There are many things that agitate me as I peruse the Maltese daily news: another dodgy building permit granted, another government minister linked to a dubious regime, another middleaged man calling for women to be forced to take pregnancy tests when the

Enter Mario Tonna, a disgraced assistant commissioner with the Malta Police Force. Back in 2011, Mr Tonna was found guilty of criminal offences such as intimidation and harassment directed at his supervisor Carmelo Bartolo. Despite this, he kept his job (having a criminal record is now something of a CV booster if applying for a position with those entrusted with keeping the law) and was promoted, not once, but twice – in 2015 and then last June, when he reached the dizzying heights of assistant commissioner.

Fast forward to 28 December when Mr Tonna’s wife filed a complaint at Sliema police station, stating that he had headbutted her during an argument and that this was not the first time he had directed violence at her. Of course, he has now resigned and will hopefully crawl back under the rock from whence he came, but this whole debacle has meant that another spotlight has been placed on the consistent failings of our justice system and the powers that be.

In any normal country, the Home Affairs Ministry and the Police Force would have publicly condemned such an incident, particularly from one of their own. They would have made the utmost effort to assure the public that this individual does not represent the attitude of the majority and that his actions would have resulted in his dismissal, had he not already resigned. But of course, this is not any normal country and, instead, the Ministry released a statement where they excused Mr Tonna’s actions since he is a “hard-working officer who worked his way up through the ranks and worked long hours for the benefit of the police corps and the public”

I’m sorry, what? So, a man head-butts his wife and a government Ministry excuses this as being ok because he puts in some serious hours at the office. Excuse me while I put down my laptop after a 65-hour working week and go out for a head-butting spree.

Do these government Ministries not have communications experts working for them? PR gurus? Anyone with an ounce of sense who could read a statement before it is published and say: “Oh no, wait, we can’t say that as it might make us look as if we are condoning domestic violence”? Or is it, as I suspect, that they do have these people but the prevailing attitude in Malta – particularly with the government and the police – is that domestic violence is a non-issue and nothing more than an inconvenient panic created by hysterical women that most probably did something to deserve it.

Being hard-working does not excuse the fact that he is a criminal. Nor does it rationalise the fact that he head-butted his wife. Of course, Mrs Tonna has now withdrawn her allegations and I only hope that she did so of her own free will and was not encouraged to do so by the police officers handling her case, as so often happens here.

Members of the current government have branded themselves as a feminist government, as pioneers of equality and civil rights, and ratifiers of the Istanbul Convention. Why is it then that a Ministry thinks it is acceptable to support a disgraced officer in a case such as this? Unfortunately, this is indicative of the real attitude towards women in this country. I have heard countless stories of women who have been turned away from police stations for trying to report gender-based violence; women who have been told they ‘deserved it’ by police officers and women who have been humiliated in court and told they are time-wasters and not to call the police the next time.

It is no secret that the authorities do not take abused women seriously and that there is a desperate need for more train- ing and education on how to handle these situations and cases professionally, so why is nothing being done?

There are many good police officers – I know a few – but the issue is the inherent attitude that runs through our society and is rotting it from the inside out. It is the view that women are nothing but house-slaves, incubators and subservient lesser beings, whose only role is to cook, clean, procreate and be quiet. You can deny this until the cows come home, but the fact of the matter is that it is apparent everywhere – on social media, in our legal system, in the workplace and in articles such as the Malta Chamber of Commerce’s feature on successful entrepreneurs in Malta – with not a single mention of a woman.

I call lip service on this being the most feminist government ever: to be able to accurately lay claim to such a title, Mr Muscat needs to let his Cabinet know that comments of this sort are not acceptable. He needs to come down harder on the perpetrators of such crimes and he needs to implement some serious education for authorities on how to handle such crimes.

Mr Muscat, if you want to be remembered as the leader of the most feminist government ever, then you need to up your game. Empty promises – while your minions do the opposite – are just not going to cut it. Malta is lagging behind the rest of Europe when it comes to women’s rights and equality, and if you want to be remembered for more than selling passports and turning a blind eye to corruption, then make your mark by condemning the comments of the Ministry of Home Affairs and publicly declaring a dedication to improving the situation for women in Malta when it comes to genderbased violence.