That said why don’t you all mention the zebbug “accident” as you nationalists call it. i don’t think that labour party ordered their thugs if there really were any to be agressive with labourite supporters.

and don’t you all remember the thugs who were close to EFA like the one who went barefooted, who was given a ‘proklama’ for all the things he did.

one question: you all seem to know the thugs as you call them that were part of those years. i stand to be corrected but when pn government took over, he could have easily prosecuted the rest although one of them had been killed. why hasn’t this happened?

I tend to agree with the quality control issue. But the same applies for PN. I can mention a dozen or more MPs in the current and the past Gonzi administration who are either inept, have massive conflicts of interest or are just not cutout to be their. Its a tendency of Maltese politics for people who may not be right for politics to be elected time after time. Maltese people seem to think that if a person is a good village doctor or an effective lawyer he is necessarily a competent parliamentarian, that is why they continue to elect such people.

Taking a look at the maltatoday surveys one can see a clear tendency. Prior to the election campaign MLP has a huge majority. This is mostly due to disillusioned nationionalists whose party has been in power for ages and don’t seem to take any interest in politics anymore.

After week 1 the advantage falls to a few percentage points – the nationalists hear their party’s rallying call, they decided that this time round they will once more vote PN. After week 2 the reception class issue comes on the agenda – it makes the MLP seem unreliable and unpredictable, it scares off any floaters that were going to vote MLP this time round – the PN overtakes MLP in the polls. Week 3 sees a further increase in PN advantage possibly up to 4000 votes as Joe Saliba stated in an interview. This advantage falls to a bare minimum after the JPO scandal is revealed.

This is irrefutable proof that it was in fact the way that the MLP handled its campaign that destroyed its chances. With some tact and some good PR handling I’m sure the MLP would have won – with a small majority mind you but it would still have governed for 5 years with 3 more parliamentarians – and yes with Sant at the helm.

Next time round it needs to be more slick, less clumsy in its PR and less complacent.

What you fail to acknowledge is that MLP did not lose the 1998-2008 elections because it was tainted with the violent acts of the past. There were other more complex reasons. I remember the last debate in 1996 where EFA tried in vain depict the mlp as still being a ‘violent thug’ party by popping out a photo of Wistin Abela with a couple of Zejtun thugs all wearing tuxedos. The rest is all history and we all know how that election went. So no past violence is not on the people’s minds when voting – that is with the exception of those few who day after day fail to move on.

David Zammit – You have to understand that people like myself and Amrio (whoever he/she may be) come from a generation where such incidents were never discussed in public and rarely made it to the news or to the newspapers (if at all). You – who were either too young (to remember) at the time, or simply came from the “right” side – can never fully understand that.

Even if internet had existed in those days, none of us would ever have dreamt of posting comments the way we do, because for that we would have paid dearly.

Let me make it a little more clear to you:

My sister was arrested (and kept for over 24 hours) simply for attending a peaceful protest in Sliema in 1983/1984. I will not go into the conditions in which she was kept, because I believe that she has already done so herself. The person responsible is now a prominent member of the MLP.

My husband – who was still 17 at the time – was arrested too, in 1984. The pretext? That he had daubed paint on a desk at some government school. The real reason? – Because, like myself, he was an active member of the ASSP (the then association of private school students), at the height of the Church schools crisis.

So, David Zammit, kindly allow us to enjoy such freedom of speech. You are lucky to have it too, and lucky that you are not persecuted for expressing your views despite the fact that they are not the same as those of the party in government.

That’s a good response David. Act bored and try to ignore the simple fact that people remember what it was like to live under an MLP government, and that is why the majority of them cannot bring themselves to ever trust Labour again until they are sure that the MLP admitss its excesses and apologises. With people like you I realise that there is a greater chance of Osama Bin Laden turning catholic than the MLP ever getting round to doing this.

As for Fusellu (it’s in full, OK?), yes, it was around 1981, because I was around 13/14 at the time. Though I wasn’t particularly interested in politics either at that age (our parents actually tried to shield us from some things), some things you just tend to pick up along the way.

When I was young, Fusellu was a familiar sight driving around Sliema in his yellow Mercedes (in the days when most families had just one old car, if any at all). I simply remember wondering how such a puny little man could instil such fear in most people.

ZZZZZZZZZ

Rest assured that there’s absolutely no need for this or any other blog to keep the memories ‘ingrained in our minds’. Perhaps you were comfortably seated on the fence at the time,seeing that you are a tifel tal-partit, or maybe you’re too young to remember, but those of our generation who passed through those horrific years, SHALL NEVER, EVER, FORGET!

Heh thats one of the major objectives of this blog – to keep that ‘lest we forget’ attitude ingrained in the minds of the PN core voters here. Ma jmurx jghaddilom min rashom jivvutaw AD ma jmurx jitla l-MLP!!