Toni Abela quotes Dom Mintoff at Labour Party annual general conference last night
Toni Abela in a meeting with China’s Communist Party a few months ago. The meeting was not publicised in the Maltese media but we found out about it through China’s media.
Ever get the feeling that instead of moving forward, Malta is moving incrementally backwards, despite legislation for divorce and same-sex marriage?
I can’t quite put my finger on it. There’s an atmosphere of less freedom rather than more, of atavistic notions and references coming to the fore.
Last night at the Labour Party annual general conference, the party’s deputy leader, Toni Abela, quoted Dom Mintoff as though he were some kind of seer. “Dom Mintoff used to say that there cannot be peace in Europe unless there is peace in the Mediterranean,” he said, “And we can see that this makes a lot of sense.”
Do we despair, or what? When Mintoff used to say that, half of Europe was locked behind the Iron Curtain and electrified fences of Soviet Communism, and the rest of us stood by helpless as we watched our fellow Europeans being shot and killed while trying to run across the barrier to freedom. Well, not all of us stood by helpless – some colluded with the Soviet oppressors, like Mintoff did, and others got special places at the university in East Berlin, reserved for friends of the Soviet regime who first had to pass through a rigorous checking process of their totalitarian credentials, like Mario Vella, current chief of Malta Enterprise.
And of the half of Europe that wasn’t locked up by Soviet oppression, another large chunk was under the jackboot of Far Right dictatorship – Spain under General Franco and Greece under the military junta.
And that sociopath of limited intelligence, put in charge of our country by people as intellectually and educationally challenged as he was, raved on in the 1970s about peace in the Mediterranean because he danced at the end of Muammar Gaddafi’s purse-strings.
Give it a rest, Toni Abela. Your rotten party has done Malta enough damage as it is, because wrongly motivated people have always seized control of it.
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I see little difference between the Labour Party’s adoration of Mintoff and the illogical value system of religious fundamentalists.
We have a big problem in this country and it will only go away until we stop thinking like desperate idiots and say “No” to the celebrating of a Human Rights violator.
When we criticise Mintoff, we get bombarded by horrid people who threaten us with all sorts of things. We are then told that we shouldn’t say bad things about Mintoff because , “you know how they get when you do that”
That is exactly the same thinking people expressed after the Charlie Hebdo attacks. These people were wrong on both occasions.
I think it is quite apt that there is a parallel to be drawn between Islamic Fundamentalists and the PL. There is something of the religious surrounding Mintoff. Sure the PN admire Dr Fenech Adami, but that is the admiration of a man who we know fought against the odds and won. With Mintoff, its a totally different story.
In the US politicians make it a point to mention God from time to time because that wins them votes. In Malta, the PL has to mention Mintoff because it wins them votes. He is used in much the same way, as if doing so makes what you are automatically good. This is strange because this is a man who violated human rights and got away with it.
I also think there is something very wrong with certain people who join the Labour Party because of this admiration and deification of Mintoff, mainly because of the sort of reaction one gets when you insult him.
You know what they say. If insults are all it takes to upset your value system, then it clearly isn’t all that stable to begin with. But then when it comes to Malta, we think it doesn’t apply. It does.
I think that the Labour Party recruits like a sect or cult. I think it fosters the same irrational ideals and the belief that being part of the party will secure your life, and anyone against it is a threat to your life. I believe that Mintoff’s ghost will haunt Malta for at least another two generations, until some clever clogs shows up to take his place.
Malta is moving incrementally backwards because Labour in government never had a comprehensive strategic vision for the country.
This explains why it has historically always tended to be on the wrong side of history.
It also explains why Labour remains a fish out of water in the EU which is founded on the common good and the pooling of sovereignty.
Traditionally it thrived on pitting the “working” class against the enterprising rest. This time round its “appeal” was based on pandering to the various interest groups and minorities which collectively led to a landslide.
Again the motivation is egoistic but the target has shifted and been broadened. The “movement” is nothing more than a hotch-potch of self-interests.
The common good has always been an alien concept to Labour. Self-interest is generally satisfied at the expense of the common good, hence the general feeling of regression and malaise among those still capable of looking beyond the tip of their noses.