And here’s another one who has no regrets
Marie Louise Coleiro Preca was secretary-general of the Labour Party between 1982 and 1991 – the Karmenu years. Yet like Alfred Sant, she has no regrets. This is what she told The Sunday Times last Sunday.
I am not ashamed of my political past. I was general secretary of the party and when there was abuse of power nobody consulted the party….they just went ahead and did it. If those who abused power were not brought to book, that is something else. But again, we had a series of such stories…we cannot just focus on a part of the story.
Is this woman for real? Is she trying to suggest that the Labour Party should be exonerated from the blame for all the evils of the 1970s and 1980s because it wasn’t consulted before the abuse took place?
Let me pause to draw breath. Coleiro Preca is saying here that the Labour government was directly responsible for no abuse, and that where abuse was committed, it wasn’t even indirectly responsible. And that is why she isn’t ashamed of having been the party’s secretary-general at a time when the worst of those excesses were taking place, and Labour was at its most corrupt and violent (which is saying something).
But here she is again.
I am against violence wherever it comes from and this country went through some very unfortunate and shameful incidents. As a citizen I am still expecting justice for the families of Karin Grech and Raymond Caruana.
Karin Grech and Raymond Caruana, because they died – but how about all those other thousands who suffered in one way or another because of the madness of the political party of which Marie Louise Coleiro Preca was secretary-general? They didn’t lose their life so of course, they have nothing to complain about.
Having failed miserably to put her role in the 1980s into its true perspective, she now claims to be the one to want a system of ‘constant evaluation’ and ‘auto-critique’ in the Labour Party. It’s more likely to be a system of self-justification and no regrets.
And then she said, with a total absence of irony:
Even I myself, if elected leader, would have to submit myself to periodic evaluation…in every aspect but especially in ethical matters…Unfortunately, this country lags behind in these areas. We still don’t really have a culture of public responsibility.
Her interviewer asked whether she thinks now that her party’s position on EU membership was mistaken, and Marie Louise Coleiro Preca immediately began to rewrite history.
We didn’t explain ourselves well enough. I’m not going to go into the slogans Switzerland in the Mediterranean, Partnership and so on.
Oh, so they were only slogans, and not policies, as we were told?
Our message was that we weren’t ready for membership. It’s not a question of the EU being bad.
Really? It isn’t? Then why was her boss Sant barking ‘Allahares nidhlu fl-Ewropa’ with his insufferable poodle yapping the same thing alongside?
The Nationalist Party as far back as the 1990s wanted us to join the EU, but procrastinated with the reforms needed to upgrade the country in general. So a number of issues stemming from the acquis came upon us all of a sudden.
Unbelievable. I can’t credit these leadership contenders. Look at them all lining up to distance themselves from everything that happened in the last 16 years – or, as in Coleiro Preca’s case, the last 26 years. First they all knew they were going to lose the election but were helpless because the losing team kept everything hidden from them and refused their help and advice. Now suddenly, none of them were against EU membership for Malta – just a little bit cautious, that’s all, and they don’t want to have anything to do with those cheap slogans that Sant coined.
It’s a little bit too late for that, honeys.
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ITS REALLY SHAMEFUL of Marie Louise Coleiro-No-Regrets-Preca to write this. A friend of mine who was so terribly terrorised at a Police Headquarters interrogation for allegedly breaking a Xandir Malta glass pane ( quite possibly by Angelo Farrugia or some other monster of his ilk) that he even ended up spending time at Mount Carmel Hospital, after his trauma.
Once I was stopped in a police Road Block, and just because I had an EFA poster in the boot of my car the 3 army personnel stuck their sten guns to my face, as some intimidation game !
That Labour-sponsored-POLICE-TERROR was the order of the day.
The Labour Party Leadership should START to make amends for its past by running full page adverts APOLOGISING to the MALTESE PEOPLE unconditionally about all the excesses while in Government , as well as not accepting the 2003 Referendum result.
Daphne, I propose you compile this full apology, and challenge the prospective leaders if they are willing to do this apology if elected leader !
SHAME ON YOU MARIE LOUISE, I AM SO APPALLED THAT I FEEL LIKE SETTING UP A PROTEST AGAINST HER IN FRONT OF THEIR HQ
All this is a variation of the theme: “I was just following orders”.
We heard that particular bromide at the trial in Nuremberg.
Tell me another.
Would ‘Sorry’ compensate for the lost careers, the deprivation of the basic necessities (you do not mention the water shortage.(We had to go to St Paul’s Bay to friends’ houses for a bath. Can you imagine 18 days without a drop in the tank?), the mental and psychological violence. The days of living in a pressure cooker, where even a chance remark at the grocer’s was embellished and reported….where tar was poured into letterboxes by your supposed friendly neighbours. Rediffusion sets blaring the MLP propaganda …. where ‘Cikka ta’ Lahlah’ went to the local school to take a class during the school issue.
No, my friend, ‘Sorry’ is just a sop; but then the characters at Mile End are not even capable of that small overture.
Then we get Ms josainne Cassar writing in the Independent on Sunday telling us that the depriviations of the 70’s and 80’s are now passe and she feels sick whenever these issues are brought up. No Ms Cassar these issues are very serious indeed and we should not only not forget them but we must make sure that all future generations are made aware of those years of terror lest one daya they might have to go through them themselves. Remember history tends to repeat itself.
To me MLcP is Cikka ta’ Lahlah personified. This is not a classist remark because I am not exactly blue-bloodied myself (except for my political allegiance) but because she spews out such brainwashed comments that only those of Cikka ta’ Lahlah’s ilk are capable of. Dazgur she has the support of the grassroots, if those at the grassroots speak the same kind of warped lingo.
I don’t know what’s all the fuss about the support. Two smart and moderate ladies got elected from two districts this election. I think that’s a first for women which no one has mentioned. We’re always hearing women’s first this and women’s first that. Nothing about this breakthrough though. And it is a breakthrough as it is no joke managing two districts I’m sure. As Marie Louise well knows; when she contested on two districts in 1998,she barely got a few hundred votes on one of them, in fact she was one of the first to be eliminated
[Moderator – No, a first will be when we don’t think that we have to congratulate women any more than we do men. If we do, then we only persist in upholding the perception of women in politics as being handicapped freaks.]
wasn’t talking about congratulations. I was talking about mentioning the fact that it happened. It’s an exception and the exception proves the rule. The rule being that we never had casual elections for parliamentary seats made vacant by women. It is not a perception, it is a reality that no woman has ever been elected on two districts until 2008.
[Moderator – Why, when it is normal in the rest of the civilised world? We should instead be lamenting.]
@ miriam drago
So, since you must be a bra-burning feminist lemme throw this one at ya –
do you know that the first joke in the Bible was cracked by a woman? In Genesis, Sarah, pregnant way past her fertile, childbearing years, named her son Isaac. In Hebrew, ‘Isaac’ means ‘laughter’, because it tickled her funny bone that she had a son in her dotage…Ejja! don’t be so serious about first woman this and first woman that.
@moderator. Agreed. lamenting means that at least we will be talking about it; we could be lamenting about a much overdue breakthrough. good point.
@meerkat. can’t burn my bra, I’m a 38D. the Sarah joke tickled my funny bone too. good one. thks.
@ miriam drago
Good one girl! Hekk mela leave such heavy election analysis stuff to drones like Edward Scicluna.
@meerkat
come to think of it Edward Scicluna never mentioned this phenomenon. we must have more female election result analysits ha ha ha rega waqa l-ass…. :)
analyists, of course
@ miriam drago
That because The Professor was busy predicting a Lejber win ruhi, with the braying Justyne leading the charge :p