Malta's Ceaucescu rewrites history
www.timesofmalta.com – 25 January – 09:08CET
The PN was the ‘violent party’ in the 1980s – KMB
The Nationalist Party was a “violent” opposition, bent on provoking trouble in the 1980s, according to former Prime Minister Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici.
In an interview with Herman Grech, Dr Mifsud Bonnici accuses the PN of conveniently fanning the infamous incidents of the 1980s until this very day for its propaganda. “The opposition had the freedom to make its position known… We had a violent opposition. And nowadays, everybody turns a blind eye to this. At least once a week there was a bomb attempt outside someone’s residence to intimidate the government. The bombs were intended to de-stabilise the (Labour) party,” he says, when probed about the notorious thugs who surrounded his own government.
Dr Mifsud Bonnici also claims that the Nationalists had reneged on a secret agreement with the Labour Party to appoint Dom Mintoff as President in 1987. The 75-year-old lawyer also says that he had been approached to contest the MEP elections as an independent, but had turned down the offer. Watch excerpts of the interview above.
56 Comments Comment
Reply to Tony Pace Click here to cancel reply
Why is anyone paying attention to this guy? He has relegated himself to the history books for all the wrong reasons and now he’s at it again!
Effing unbelievable the sheer gall of some people!
One day can someone ask Fenech Adami who were those people who killed Raymond Caruana and Karin Grech? He made a promise, and time is passing by.
And it’s true – the Nationalists in opposition, whether justifiably or not, were bent on provoking violence. The fact that Labour thugs and the police fell for it by reacting violently is a sad episode, but it does not obliterate the part played by the opposition. KMB is simply stating a fact long dismissed by the media, but not by thousands of individuals. Violence was not in Labour’s interest – no government wants civil unrest – but frustrated oppositions do. This spate of violence ceased as soon as the Nationalists regained power in 1987. The question of who was responsible for the bombs placed outside PN premises remains unanswered today, even if, for many still alive, there is no mystery at all.
Tal-PN mhux biss kienu jitfghu l-gebla u jahbu idhom, izda kienu jaghmlu dan b’tali mod li jehlu tal-Labour. This state of affairs frustrated the police in ways that at times made them act irrationally.
Well the Labour admininistration was far from perfect. But hand grenades and sub-machineguns were found at the stamperija and not at the macina. And it was EFA as PM who, after 1987, promoted certain police officers who abused human rights. One wonders….
[Daphne – Weapons were also found at the farmhouse of Pietru Pawl Busuttil, and my father was arrested for possession of a dangerous walkie-talkie, which turned out to be a Dictaphone the police had never seen before. Please explain why Lorry Pullicino’s force would have had any interest in raiding the macina to find weapons. As to your last point, I agree that their promotion was an absolute scandal, but it wasn’t Fenech Adami who promoted them. It was Sicilian deputy, and this is not the place to go into the reasons why that might have been. I will only remark that they were almost certainly personal rather than party political.]
I must admit I don’t know much about this Sicilian deputy…
Let’s take the murder of Nardu Debono. It was a horrible episode. But why do people fail to say that he had been caught red-handed placing a bomb in a block of flats where Laurence Pullicino lived. I’m not justifying what the police did. They were (and sometimes still are) brutal. But why is it that when mentioning Debono’s murder we don’t also say what the police were reacting to?
[Daphne – But that’s just the trouble. We can’t believe anything the police said at the time. They were operating criminally themselves.]
Like horrible children, foolish has-beens are best seen and not heard.
Kevin Ellul Bonici: That same rubbish excuse was first used in the mythical Garden of Eden. It still doesn’t wash.
@ Kev – your comment is despicable. The violence stopped because the police force was rid of Lorry Pullicino and his clan who protected the perpetrators – and it took some time. The violence continued after the change of government. Have you forgotten the attack on the tourist coach in Marsa, and the fires started at the Phoenicia and Preluna to scare off the tourists.
For your info, violence was institutionalised; it was perpertrated by the police force itself. KMB should himself be tried for being the PM and politically responsible for the actions of Police Commissioner Monster Lorry Pullicino. I know for a fact that among Pullicino’s books at home are Nazi books and other sadist material. I know this from a senior police officer who served under him (who was also Labour) but who resigned because he could not continue to witness the abuse that went on at the Depot. So Kev, DON’T INSULT PEOPLE WHO WERE THE VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE under the Mintoff/KMB regime. Evidently you were not around at the time.
[Daphne – Not only was Kevin Ellul Bonici around, but he was a police officer. And to the violence after the change in government in 1987, you should add the drydocks’ workers going on the rampage yet again and attacking the law courts and shops in Republic Street, towing the Copper Mountain carrier across the mouth of Grand Harbour to bar entry to HMS Brazen, and I’m sure others can add to this list.]
“it wasn’t Fenech Adami who promoted them. It was his Sicilian deputy. ”
Yes, and that deputy’s daughter defended the man accused of killing the PM’s right hand man (and many people including myself believe he was the one doing the defending behind the scenes). And by incredible coincidence the regulations of University where changed just long enough for his grandsons to enter the law course.
I don’t hate that man as much as KMB et al but he sure comes close. One can even argue that in KMB’s case it was sheer incompetence at leadership but not with el secondo.
[Daphne – What goes round comes around. The grandsons flunked the law course despite having the regulations bent through nonno‘s connections for a fixed ‘time-window’ to allow them to get in. Obviously, they couldn’t be expected to get an A-level in Maltese like everyone else. Ma tarax. The worst bit is that these things get talked about but never written about.]
Marcus
“Why is anyone paying attention to this guy? He has relegated himself to the history books for all the wrong reasons and now he’s at it again!”
It must be a dastardly plot by the PN. Now that the EP elections are nearing, they are pushing KMB to the forefront again, to remind people how horrible Labour really are. I’m surprised Kev didn’t pick it up; it’s not like him to miss plots.
KMB should shut up and thank the stars that he was never prosecuted for the violence that he instigated and participated in. I really would have liked to see him on trial.
I invite you to watch these clips on youtube…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpLJDc13k7Q&feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbPhNePqKGQ&feature=channel
draw your own conclusions…..
Just imagine Mintoff as president. I don’t know what could be worse.
@ Corinne – are you in love with my name, or is it a kind of fetish?
Daphne : HMS Brazen was brought to Malta at the end of the MLP era. Remember the “brazen” face Minister of foreign affairs: AST?
[Daphne – That was the first time she called at Malta. The second time, she had to be moored off St Paul’s Bay and it was definitely post 1987 because I had two if not three children.]
Oh yes, and I almost forgot the rampage at an election meeting, a few days before the 1992 election, when they smashed shop fronts at the Strand in Sliema. So Kev, was this also the work of Nationalists infiltrating the Laburisti and smashing the shops? That episode alone probably gave KMB his tkaxkira in the 1992 election.
Now that Daphne also reveals that you were part of the police force pre-1987, you really have the gall! You just can’t understand the feelings of people who were the victims of violence (including myself) about what Labour represents. We can’t come round to saying, hey the MLP or PL is starting from a clean slate because the PL has never apologised unconditionally for its actions in the 1980s, when it turned our country into a police state. For Joseph Muscat to really mean Stagun Politiku Gdid he should have run full page adverts apologising for all Labour’s excesses in government. Yes, 20 years later we middle-aged voters still feel the pain.
This is why we will always continue to vote PN. Many PN supporters readily admit the PN also makes mistakes, but the PL is just not a credible alternative government. And if you really look at things in an unbiased way, Gonzi’s cabinet today (hence government) comprises of some very capable people. In my view the best cabinet to date. And what about the shadow cabinet? It’s a sad joke as the PL has sidelined its best people. Can you imagine Anthony Zammit as minister of health instead of Dalli? Or Joe Mizzi instead of Austin Gatt?
And to further help the Labour cause we then have apologists like Kevin Ellul Bonici!
[Daphne – Anthony Zammit had no credibility to begin with, but he lost the dregs of it when he gave that fantastical interview to the press, describing how he was tied up and robbed. I suppose he was trying to avoid the consequences of being found with a satsuma in his mouth and a pair of stockings wrapped round his neck as happened to a certain UK politician some years ago. After all, he had to give some kind of explanation to his home-help when he was found like that. Tal-biki. People will forgive any number of sex games, but they won’t forgive the weakness and lies of trying to pass them off as violent robbery.]
I omitted the word apologising …. should have run full page adverts APOLOGISING for all Labour’s excesses…
Kevin Ellul Bonici: It is neither. I use your full name because it identifies you. You do not, for the exact same reason.
@ david s – in comparson to what I’m writing about I consider the famous “shooting of the tourist coach” as little more than a bad prank. Same goes for Daphne’s examples – some uncoordinated idiots had tried to imitate the PN in opposition, it seems. And Lorry Sant’s rampage was just that – a short-lived rebellion. I’m referring to some other facts of which I am personally well aware.
This period in history takes more than knee jerk reactions by brainwashed disciples shooting from the hip. Once you start analysing this period you are led backward in time as one reaction follows another, be it social, political or statal. So stop being smartasses with your gung-ho one-liners. It’s not even possible to carry out a decent debate with this holier-than-thou attitude. Labour made many errors, while the police force of the 80s was only a development of the post-war police force and did not differ much from that of the 60s. But it takes two to tango and it was finally the PN itself that deviously provided the noose by which Labour could hang itself. It was as dark a period for the PN as it was for the MLP in power. In the end the Establishment, shaken to the core by Mintoff’s advent in 1971, regained the power it thought it was going to lose forever. It was our little post independence civil war. The long awaited clash between the workers and the Establishment. Today it’s all over; times have changed – but your attitudes need to change too.
Corinne – you know my full name because I chose to allow it to happen. The reason why I write under kev is something I explained rationally a long time ago, but that would have flown past your hyperlastic brain waves.
…and don’t look it up.
@ david s – had you known me better you’d have thought twice before calling me a police state apologist. That period was tough for all and nothing about it is either black or white.
Please check out the links to youtube posted by Jason Borg..and Lorry Sant’s outburst at the end. Tat-tkexkix
@ Kev – “It was our little post-independence civil war” . You are truly pathetic.
Daphne, I think it was the “Ark Royal” not the “Brazen”.
[Daphne – Yes, I think so, too.]
@Kevin Ellul Bonici,
Where were you, seeing that you were a police officer, when the Labour government-endorsed thugs tried to break into church schools terrifying defenseless children? You know, the time your precious Labour government tried to deny children like me (I was ten at the time) their right to an education? Where were you and your buddies in uniform when I was locked out of my school for a whole term?
Were you by any chance hunting for people like my parents who opened their homes to other people in the same situation so we could study underground whilst giving the finger to KMB and his ilk?
@Kevin Ellul Bonici
Also, why the hell should we forget when the Labour Party continuously kept trying to ruin our future, and now that of my children – when your wife tried fanatically to keep my children out of the EU, going so low as to campaign in Ireland against the Nice treaty after she failed hopelessly in her campaign here in Malta!
Glad to say she failed miserably there too.
Daphnet it was the Aircraft Carrier HMS ARK ROYAL.1989
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/2007/mw/mw_may9_2007/t9.html
“Return of the Royal Navy
In July 1989, HMS Ark Royal became the first British navy ship to visit Malta since the closure of the naval base 10 years earlier. It was a controversial affair, as the world’s largest aircraft carrier was forced to berth in St Paul’s Bay by a small group of Opposition supporters.”
And KMB conveniently declared the MLP as THE green party of Malta.
[Daphne – Yes, I realise that now. The Brazen was here twice, though.]
They removed the article – how strange.
[Daphne – No, it’s still there. Go to Latest News at the top of the page, then Other Stories, and at the bottom right you’ll see More Stories. Click on that.]
I remember a baptism at Saint Paul’s Shipwreck Church in 1990, the name of one of the babies was ……yes, Brazen.
@Kevin Ellul Bonici
I assure you that with all the mistakes committed by GonziPN (as your sort loves calling a democratically elected government), many of us who went through the horrors of the 70s and 80s will make sure your lot will not even as much as smell the government seats.
@Jason Borg
Thank you for posting Fenech Adami’s statements in Parliament. Lest we forget………… I am emailing them to my children to remind them what ”voting MLP or LP” really meant. My father was bashed on the head by a policeman as he was going to church: 30 stitches on his head and headaches for the rest of his life. A quiet man who provoked none and a friend to Labourites and Nationalists alike. That was your police force. Sadly the PL rabble have not changed….
When the PN came into power in 1987, some members of the police force were given an opportunity for a fresh start, and they took this up admirably. This was done for the sake of trying to obtain a level of stability within the force and the general law and order in the country – I am sure Fenech Adami had a strong say in such matters.
Labelling his deputy a Sicilian is out of context – most of our families have traits of foreign blood somewhere along their ancestry.
And with regards to the other comments, we have become accustomed with attacks and unjustified gossip on his offspring. It is perhaps a way of trying (however unsuccessfully) to belittle one of the best politicians our country has ever had. And this is a widely acknowledged opinion.
With regards to where the attacks are/have been coming from all these years? The same factions within the party (and no, I am not referring to you, Daphne) who used cloak and dagger tactics to get rid of GBO and others like Mario Felice. And by the way, I am a Nationalist (and have always been).
[Daphne – No, I call him a Sicilian because that’s his way of doing politics, I’m afraid. One of the best politicians this country has ever had? Like hell. Perhaps I’m more au fait with the truth than you are.]
Kev, that’s as may be, but the MLP wielded absolute power from 1971 to 1987, and still managed to ruin the country. What pisses off some of us is that not a single MLP politician has ever admitted that yes, maybe they were entirely misguided and maybe they did screw up big time. It’s always Workers this, and Establishment that, and colonial namb-pamby, and consolidation of local industry, and Non-Alignment, and so proceed ad infinitum. Nardu Debono was just an individual, killed by an individual. The Midalja Gieh ir-Repubblika was awarded to (the real) Ceaucescu in the name of the entire nation. See my point?
I quote this line from David Buttigieg for posterity: “..when your wife tried fanatically to keep my children out of the EU.”
Lest we forget, Kev.
I found it strangely comforting to read the interview with Malta’s biggest ever disaster as a prime minister (close call with Alfred Sant). Though bringing back the many horrible memories of those years, the discomfort was quickly replaced by the relief of realizing that these are the views of somebody who has long ago been consigned to the dustbin of political history, and thankfully has zero influence on our lives these days.
The guy who ran a police state and who thanked the dry-docks workers for doing more than necessary, when smashing up the Curia and law courts, has the gall to talk of a violent opposition in those days. Why doesn’t he retire peacefully, and leave us all in peace? He can always discuss his mould-infested, cobweb-filled politics with il-Perit over a cup of gulepp,whilst admiring Gaddafi’s prize for human rights together, and reminiscing about their glory years in power.
The Labour Party can change its name, its logo and even its leader, but so long as people like KMB e la bella compagnia are still around, ‘Bidu gdid’, remains a bad joke.
As for Kevin Ellul Bonici, is he by any chance related to the lady who has been telling us for years to avoid the EU like the plague, and now wants us to vote her into the EU parliament? If so, 10 points for consistency and credibility, and so much for Bidu Gdid! As a friend of mine once told me, only the weather changes…..people and the Labour Party don’t.
[Daphne – Kevin is married to Sharon.]
Kevin Ellul Bonici: “you know my full name because I chose to allow it to happen”
The caped crusader unmasks himself.
To be exact, it was HMS Brazen that was the first Royal Navy vessel to call at Malta after 1979. On that famous visit, Alex Sceberras Trigona was photographed in a sailor’s cap and looked ridiculous. The visit by HMS Ark Royal was after that episode. And yes, Daphne, you are right: HMS Brazen visited Malta again later.
I was fortunate enough to be serving aboard HMS Brazen in 1986 when we sailed into Grand Harbour and I often search for information on this fantastic period in my life as I would love to be able to find a picture/footage of the event to remember in the years to come.
I want to say a MASSIVE thank you to all the people of Malta who came out on that momentous day to welcome us in, it was truly humbling.
Here’s hoping this post may trigger a reply from someone who remembers the day as fondly as I do.
Kindest regards,
Simon
Oh come on, Kev, now please don’t try to twist facts yourself. I was 17 in 1984, when it was considered the norm for peaceful student protests or the like to be “attended” by police armed with shields, masks and batons … not to mention the tear gas that was sometimes let off for no reason.
Oh yes, there was also the time when some of us teenage students gathered outside San Anton Palace to present the then president with a petition regarding the closure of our schools … only for the president to whip the person presenting the petition across the face with the papers and then charging round. The armed police who were present naturally took that as a cue to “disperse” the crowd of harmless teenagers.
And please, Kev, let us not forget that when the law courts and the Curia were “redecorated” by the dry-docks workers who – in between – paraded through the streets of Valletta banging chains and heavy tools against the trucks they were on, that upturned broomstick was there among them … signing autographs for adoring women. I saw him myself, through an office window.
You and yours may try to re-write history, Kev, but those who lived through it will bloody well make sure that the facts are not forgotten.
Daphne – “my father was arrested for possession of a dangerous walkie-talkie, which turned out to be a Dictaphone the police had never seen before”
I still remember the ridiculous policemen searching our home, even looking up the chimney, expecting the offending Dictaphone to be hidden there. Oh, the bad old days…
@Kev
I would like to ask you where you were when we (then university students) were peacefully protesting within the university grounds and the “aristocracy of the workers”, better known as the blood-sucker dockyard workers, came with chains and iron rods and attacked us?
Do you have the guts to tell us that we were inciting violence and that we were under some PN plan to get the MLP in trouble?
The MLP brought everything on itself once it ignored the people’s 1981 verdict, when it allowed Dardir Malta to broadcast its load full of hate, when it allowed criminals within the police force, when it turned this country into a place where one had to have a godfather (sometimes paying for his/her service) to obtain basic items such as televisions and a telephone line.
And the list goes on and on and on……
Kev and the rest of the elves – please keep excusing the MLP’s behaviour as well rewriting history – it is the only way to remind us that old Labour is still alive and well, just masked behind a screen.
jenny – “Just imagine Mintoff as president. I don’t know what could be worse.”
Having him as prime minister yet again.
ZERO + ZERO=ZERO.
Most of the comments provided far more reading value than THAT article!
MLP violence after May 1987? Don`t you remember the shooting in the main square by some brave defenders of the Zejtun Republic who did not like the presence of the witnesses at a particular wedding?
Dear all concerned, I think I was specific enough. If you take the time to read my comments again you might be able to breathe the air in which I wrote them. I could write volumes on the subject, but if those few lines provoked such reactions, then you’re evidently not ready for the full story.
By the way, has Anthony Mifsud been given his compensation? After bleeding this poor guy’s story to death, the Nats in government refused to give him any compensation, showing him the way to “administrative remedies”. A few months ago the Courts awarded him Lm81,000 in compensation, in a case against Lawrence Pullicino (and not against the Commissioner of Police), and Superintendents Carmelo Bonello and Jose Psaila. Mifsud subsequently appealed on the grounds that the sum awarded does not reflect the seriousness of the damages he suffered.
Which means that the kindly Nats were happy in leaving this defenceless guy alone with his legal bills (further eating into his compensation) to fight his way for 27 years. This is revolting violence of the scrapyard dogs style.
[Daphne – A helpful hint: nobody says ‘the Nats’ in real life, so your comments would be more authentic if you avoided using it. Otherwise you run the risk of sounding affectedly idiotic, like Anthony Licari – the one person who does, on second thoughts, use the name non-ironically.]
It’s amazing to see that 25 years down the line KMB still manages to stir up such bad memories.
@Kevin Ellul Bonici
The site moderator, perhaps rightly so, decided to omit the language I used, to express what my feelings for you and your likes are, imma vera trid tkun wiccek u l’warrani xorta, biex tipprova tippoppa sidrek u tinjora l-istorja.
[Daphne – Well, I’m not mad keen on regular participants in this blog insulting each other in an extreme way. You’re sharing the same space, and I don’t like it.]
@Jason Borg
For purely interest sake, do you have the rest of that Parliamentary sitting, including Mintoff’s speech? If yes, would be interesting to have it posted on Youtube. So much was said about that speech, yet I only remember it vaguely as a kid on TV in 1986.
As for the rest, thanks for posting them online – brought memories back of how parliamentary sittings were in those days, not least when Colonel Cachia (not seen in the filming but you can see Eddie’s reaction in Part 7) wanted to cross over from the visitors’ gallery, as well as the reactions of some Labour MPs of the time – shocking.
@Daphne
I honestly admire the way you attack and try to demolish (successfully mostly) arguments by attacking the way in which they are said by identifing and then attacking some small inexactitude or whatever in the way the argument is put, or the terminology used. This deflects the attention of the reader away from the the content of the argument since they would be giving you recognition for how right you are on such and such a point. (In this case my use of “Nats”).
With such weapons wielded successfully by those on their side, the Nationalists will be in for generations to come. Awguri.
[Daphne – That’s not at all why I do it. A lot of people don’t realise that the devil is in the detail, and that credibility is undermined by inexactitude of terminology or grammar. I’m very interested in language and how it is deployed, and my comments are the result of curiosity and maybe even unwarranted advice. Let’s take two examples from the news right now: George Walker Bush and Barack Obama. If the first were an eloquent speaker, would he have met with such great public derision? Somehow, I don’t think so. His inability to string a proper sentence together undermined his credibility even on major issues like the war. By the same token, Barack Obama wins respect and has a great deal of credibility because he’s literate and a good speaker. His sentences are invariably constructed perfectly.]
And who shouted “GWERRA GWERRA kontra n-Nazzjonalisti” in 1998? – And they said it was “New Labour” then! @Kev pls note! Labour never change no matter how much they try to change their name, as Tal-Labour remains like a wolf disguised in sheep’s clothing.
It was HMS Ark Royal that was blocked from entering the grand harbour; Brazen was the first RN ship to visit Malta a year before this incident. And this incident happened because of KMB and his ‘adherence’ to the Constitution regarding the ban of military vessels carrying nuclear arsenal entering Malta, HMS Ark Royal never had any nuclear armament in the first place. It was such an embarrassing incident.
And it certainly isn’t the biggest aircraft carrier in the world; its displacement is registered at 20,000 tonnes. There are other carriers which weigh 90,000 tonnes.
Kev,
“I could write volumes on the subject, but if those few lines provoked such reactions, then you’re evidently not ready for the full story.”
No doubt, you could fill volumes with factual horror stories of the time when the police (including the highest ranks) were little better than thugs in uniform but you prefer to spin stories from your parallel universe.
KMB is as credible as Pilate claiming that Jesus nailed Himself to the cross. By supporting him you are not making his absurdities more convincing but your ‘convictions’ more absurd.
Labour supporters have traditionally used the phrase “nazzjonalisti hodor”, and some people here seem to be doing their utmost to resurrect that phrase. Any objective mind reading these comments would come to this conclusion, especially in the light of what I actually wrote. I never apologised for the police state that Malta was (and to a certain extent still is). But you people not only made tangential leaps in order to accuse me of anything that came to mind, you have also betrayed your narrow-mindedness. Il-veru misskom tisthu! Nazzjonalisti hodor, indeed!
Kevin, if indeed you had any principles you should have stood up to be counted when you were in the police force serving under that ahdar Lorry Pullicino. That is what my friend did, (and he was a Labourite). And because he did so, Pullicino made his life hell, and my friend ended up resigning. Yes, although he was a Laburist he could not bear the goings-on at the depot. Not only have you no principles, but you have the effrontery to insult the victims of violence inflicted by your buddy Lorry Pullicino. And now you call those who criticise you hodor. U mur ixxejjer, ghax veru wiccek u l-warrani xorta. Actually, I apologise to your warrani.
What utter nonsense for Kevin to claim that once violence ended in 87 then it was the Nationalists who provoked the violence. The violence ended because the mental PM, the corrupt senior ministers, the murderer Commissioner of Police and the equally violent head of the armed forces were no longer around to protect the thugs and the SAG. On the eve of the Zejtun meeting, KMB inspected the barricades erected to stop the Nationalists from entering Zejtun – he did nothing to have them removed. When Fenech Adami was giving a passionate speech in parliament on the violence of the 80s and he mentioned the head of the armed forces, the latter stormed into the House and threatened him. Can you imagine that happening today and worse still having high ranking ministers protecting such behaviour?
There was a very serious case of violence post-87 during a wedding in Zejtun, at which the new prime minister was one of the guests. If I am not mistaken gunshots were fired. The facts of the matter are that there were a bunch of thugs who felt that they were above the law and acted with total impunity to intimidate Nationalist supporters. To not acknowledge the wrongs when many liberties were denied by a police state is despicable, but to blame it on the persons who suffered the tear gas, torture, beatings, frame-ups etc is as cowardly an action as placing a gun in someone’s farm for him to get the blame for a murder. Keep your mouth shut or give a superficial apology but don’t blame it on the victims.
When discussing Maltese politics, there are a couple of simple questions one can ask people, and on the basis of the answer you can decide if their credibility level is anywhere above zero.
In other words, should you bother to continue the debate? Is there any sense in it? Is anything they say on any other topic credible at all? Should they be participating in a democratic debate? Even if only on the grounds that it is a necessary evil in support of the democratic process itself?
The questions can be related to a particular time in history. For instance, with reference to the recent past, one can ask “who won the referendum on EU entry?” If the answer is ‘those who voted no’, then you know that your interlocutor is either (a) a moron, (b) simply has no grasp of the basic principles of democracy, or (c) is in bad faith.
An older question resurrected by Malta’s favourite unelected lunatic is “who provoked the political violence in the 1980s”. If he/she answers “the PN”, then he is either (a) a moron, (b) someone who is a victim of that violence in the form of the state television’s propaganda at the time, (c) in bad faith, or (d) an active & willing participant in that violence.
When the person of whom the question is asked happens to have been a member of the police force at the time, one starts to think of combinations of the above choices.
Excluding (b), and probably (a), of course…..
One also starts experiencing emotions such as contempt, disgust, revulsion, abhorrence.
One also wonders if perhaps the continental countries which have made holocaust denial a crime aren’t onto a good thing.
Good Afternoon Daphne,
Keep on posting, well done.
Just a small note – According to my archives the Grand Harbour blockade occurred 25th June 1988 with HMS ARK ROYAL, HMS EDINBURGH, RFA FORT GRANGE and RFA OLWEN headed to Saint Paul’s Bay because of seriously irresponsible persons.
[Daphne – Yes. I remember it well. They towed the Copper Mountain across the harbour mouth. We had taken the babies down to St Paul’s Bay to see the Ark Royal. The rampage I’m referring to in this piece took place in Valletta – the usual, involving the law courts, etc.]
Reference the Ark Royal and nuclear weapons. At the time the policy of HMG was “neither to confirm or deny the presence of nuclear weapons on any of its ships”, so no-one can say for certain whether she was or not at any particular time. However the matter has since been declassified and it is known that all ships capable of operating anti submarine helicopters could and often did carry tactical nuclear depth charges. Another version could be carried by Sea Harriers. Since the end of the Cold War, the policy has changed. WE177A -see Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WE.177