Former ONE chairman Jason Micallef was absolutely right.
“The farce of the buying and selling of sex currently ongoing on the national TV station should make us blush… This country has truly lost all sense of what the national station should be… Is this what we’re paying €6.3 million a year for?” he said in a social media post.
Micallef was referring to Love Island, a reality show where several young men and women prance around scantily dressed and jump into bed with complete strangers immediately upon getting to know them on national TV.
This was nothing but an exercise in titillation, a massive mass distraction. It was despicable exploitation of those young people for profit.
It was the sexualization and objectification of a group of desperate young people ready to engage in lewd behaviour for weeks in public view for the gratification of a voyeuristic nation depleted of all respect for the dignity of the individuals exploited.
As Micallef so accurately and succinctly commented, this was the shameful buying and selling of sex on national TV. What was certainly in no doubt was that the content of that reality show was of an adult nature – the behaviour, the conversations, the casual irresponsible attitude towards sex, and the activities in which the producers compelled the participants to engage. Everything in Love Island was strictly adult material.
But Malta’s prime minister invited the whole team of participants in that programme to have lunch with his daughter at his official prime ministerial summer residence at Girgenti Palace.
The prime minister’s daughter just turned 11 in February. She is a child. Yet her father and mother invited the participants of an explicitly sexual reality show for lunch with their young daughter.
That was bad enough. Even more shocking was the wide distribution of photos of the prime minister’s daughter wearing only a bikini in various poses with the participants who had jumped into bed with their housemates within hours of meeting them.
The prime minister’s wife was photographed embracing participants of that same reality show. The lunch didn’t happen by the poolside. There was no reason why those attending lunch should have been in their swimwear. But that was one of the objectionable messages disseminated by the show.
From the very start, whether they were swimming or not, participants were filmed in their swimwear. Introductions of female participants to the show took place in their swimwear. Even during conversations away from the pool or while engaged in other activities, the skimpiest of clothing was the rule.
There was only one reason for it. It was pure unadulterated sexual objectification of those participants purely for the financial gain of the producers. Indeed there was nothing else to the show.
Conversations were often shallow, misogynistic, disrespectful, manipulative and disturbing, even for adults. The impact of that despicable exploitation of those young persons’ bodies is evident in the choice of clothing of the prime minister’s young daughter for the lunch organised by her father.
The child is not to blame here. It is her parent’s bizarre and unsettling decision to allow their young daughter to meet those participants, be photographed with them and disseminate photos of herself in a bikini being embraced by one of the male participants that is in question.
Which parents of a pre-teen would organise a lunch for their child to interact with adults who have publicly engaged in lewd and suggestive behaviour on national TV in the hope of winning prize money?
What sort of values do those participants promote? Those participants are adults. They’re responsible for their own choices. But Robert Abela’s daughter is not even a teenager. Why is a child exposed to Love Island and its participants at such a tender age?
Those participants’ only claim to fame is that they were ready to humiliate themselves publicly for weeks on end, revealing their shallowness, as well as their most personal issues, to the whole nation while revealing as much of their bodies as possible.
There was nothing stylish or glamorous. It was just tacky, trivial and cheap.
From the set to the tasks to the narrator’s comments – it was just sordidly appalling. Whether such rubbish should be aired on national TV is debatable. What surely is not debatable is that Love Island is not the stuff of children.
That Robert and Lydia Abela allow their only daughter to be contaminated by enabling her inappropriate contact with these pseudo-celebrity purveyors of sex is nothing short of irresponsible.
Why would they do it? That child needs protection, not VIP access to a world of perverted adulthood.
Was it the huge popularity of the reality show that made Robert Abela let his daughter be used for more publicity for the show’s potential sequel?
Why did Abela allow his daughter’s photographs to be widely distributed on social media? Why were inappropriate photos of the young girl allowed to be uploaded by those participants?
Why was the prime minister’s wife posing with those indecent participants at the prime minister’s official residence? Why did she allow her photos and those of her daughter to be taken, let alone circulated?
Is Abela so desperate for popularity as to exploit his own daughter? Is he jumping on the bandwagon of Love Island’s ‘success’?
As parents, Robert and Lydia Abela have a duty to protect their underage daughter from undue publicity and exposure, from unnecessary loss of her privacy and inappropriate contact with those prominent exponents of tawdriness.
The Commissioner for Children, former Labour Mayor Antoinette Vassallo, should wake up from her long stupor. This isn’t normal.
It’s not acceptable for an 11-year-old child to have any access to an X-rated adult world. Robert and Lydia Abela must realise they are role models for many young parents. What they’ve done should not be emulated.
They paraded their daughter’s name on a marble plaque at Sant Anton Gardens, as if they are the one and only. But it seems they are, to parade a 11year old girl in swimwear together with a troop of sex show actors , is being sick in mind .
Sweetest Giorgia Mae she is the sweetest girl.
Whoever had this idea was not thinking.
Excellent comment, which unfortunately highlights the non existent moral values and principles that now prevails in Malta.
What is also negatively amazing is the high number of viewers of such trash.
Not particularly surprised that “Chinese Massage” parlours and gentlemen’s club have proliferated in Malta and Gozo.
Hollywood and now Las Vegas has come to Malta to stay.
From special olympics Malta ambassador to this!!! We cannot unsee what we have just seen.
…anything glitzy goes within an ‘a la carte’ local ‘socialist’ value paradigm…is it any wonder that us earthlings perceive ourselves as inhabiting a parallel world, upon which one has no understanding, let alone control…?
Lydia and Robert, role models???? God forbid. The prime minister is worried about leaving his daughter alone at Triq ir-Repubblika but then it’s ok posing in a bikini with adults!!!!!! Oh my my my!!!!!!!
SHAME ON YOU LYDIA AND ROBERT ABELA.
Using your child daughter for your public relations to increase some points in your polls, is a form of pimping your own flesh and blood.
It would have been better had you invited them to give them a lesson in morals, responsible parenthood and last but not least, table manners and etiquette.
By the way, was it appropriate to serve wine to probably youths who are still underage for drinking alcohol?
Some people can only – and very correctly – be described as ‘irresponsible nuts’.
Robert & Lydia Abela may be 2 successful politician & lawyers but as parents they are disgraceful and should be investigated for using their 11 years old daughter to publicise & promote this sex show on social medial!!!
Which parents of a pre-teen would organise a lunch for their child to interact with adults who have publicly engaged in lewd and suggestive behaviour on national TV in the hope of winning prize money?
Mafia apologists.
The Abelas made their offering and sacrifice to their god of “money and power”, imitating Abraham when he offered his son Isaac. No level-headed person, in the street, would have done this with their own child, which goes to show by whom we’re being run in this country.
Child protection should visit them without delay
They don’t know better.
Fejnha l-Kummissarju ghat-Tfal? Tmexmex il-fenek ukoll? Li l-Prim Ministru juza t-tfal fil-propaganda politika rajnieha l-hin kollu.
The commissioner for children should step in and give the opinion of her office about this situation. It is definitely not an examplary upbringing one would expect from the prime minister and his wife.
To me the Abelas have lost their sense of decorum.
Why is everyone with clothes and child with a bikini ?
I am only hoping that she was playing in the pool area and decided to go and say hi to the guests.
If it were a poor family, the daughter would be taken into care for her own protection. This is a PM devoid of a moral compass, we already knew that but what’s happening here is child abuse. I wonder if the Archbishop has an opinion on it, that he would like to share?
The Abela’s are only fit for Joseph’s purpose. They are not fit as parents let alone to govern this country. That child should be under protection.
There is something so deeply wrong about this! No wonder the country is going to the dogs!
It actually has gone to the dogs already.
Simply disgusting, how the ‘prime minister’(hardly worthy of the title) and his wife should expose their daughter to such indecencies.
It was not her place as a child to be amongst these perverted adults!
Bad enough for adults, let alone a child.
Stripped of all Human Dignity!
As I always say, and this is the man chosen to rule our beloved country.
No sense of morals, ethics and propriety. This is also an abuse of a minor.
Shame on you, prime minister