Mintoff jahdem biex jehles mil-hakma tal-oppressur barrani
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February 18, 2010 at 10:25pm
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haha good one. But you either spend too much time on the internet… or you have some great elves.
[Daphne – No. It’s just that smart people vote PN as I do, and smart people can find stuff quickly because they know where to look. By smart I don’t mean clothes as in ‘smart-casual’, incidentally.]
He’s trying to affect a toff accent.
Oddly enough, his accent was very often an educated one, bit toffish, especially when speaking to his wife Moira (incidentally, a lovely, long-suffering lady), his children, and the British top brass he loved socialising with. But of course that didn’t apply when he had his cronies around. He wanted to develop this image of a hamallu made good but stuck to his roots. In true Mintoffian style he manipulated every situation to suit himself. What a monster!
Mintoff was , is and forever will be the greatest Maltese that ever lived
Well he was a Rhodes scholar.
He got the scholarship primarily because he was deemed by the adjudicating board to be pro-British, unlike his fellow applicants.
This is quite well known history, but seeing it from a colonial perspective is very interesting. I came across an article by journalist and author Christopher Hitchens about Malta’s post-colonial experience. Below is just a small excerpt.
In spite of their matchless resistance to an attempted Nazi invasion from 1940 to 1942, the Maltese were denied self-government in the postwar years, and shared with the Cypriots the sad distinction of being the only Europeans to live under European colonialism. Attempts to alter this state of affairs were met with every kind of repression. In 1961 the Catholic Church, which here makes its Nicaraguan counterpart appear enlightened, actually excommunicated the entire Maltese Labor Party. It became a mortal sin even to buy a Labor newspaper, and children were asked in the confessional to report on parents if they voted the wrong way.
The full link is http://www.dailymalta.com/wt/2007/01/christopher-hitchens-on-malta-part-1.shtml
This is part 2 of the Hitchens article
http://www.dailymalta.com/wt/2007/01/christopher-hitchens-on-malta-part-2.shtml
And the point is Daphne? Never forget that Mintoff was the most cunning politician Malta ever had and this could have merely been the first step in a much larger agenda for the island.
[Daphne – And if I were small, brown and fuzzy I would be a coconut (or Kurt Farrugia, il-kommjunikejxinSSS boss tal-Labour).]
Sorry, I have no idea who Kurt Farrugia is. Maybe I’m dumb but I just don’t get what you are trying to say!
[Daphne – The Labour Party’s communications supremo. Looks like a coconut on (short) legs – though of course that wouldn’t matter if he were bright.]
Union with Britain would have made Malta PART of the UK, with the Maltese having British citizenship and with Maltese MPs in Westminster. We would have been in the EU in 1972, instead of having to beg on our knees for 14 years. Please listen carefully to Mintoff’s words in this clip. After all, yes, Mintoff is a socialist. For a socialist, a country´s constitutional status comes AFTER the social situation.
[Daphne – Make your mind up, Albert. Did you want Malta to become part of Britain (like the Falklands), and the Maltese not Maltese at all but British subjects – or were the British il-hakem and 31 March Freedom Day? Labour – so bloody confused and confusing.]
Albert, please try to explain what you can see in a party that never did anything for Malta – please don’t give us the guff about Airmalta (25 years of screwing us with monopolistic prices that were overinflated to cover the cost of the hundreds of ‘bazuzli’ who worked there) or “sewxjal servisis” which the PN always improved and added to, or introduced new ones – like stipends, which Labour removed.
In the Labour Party’s heyday, all we got was a second-hand power station, a phone system that was – literally – someone else’s scrap, no water, digging trenches for jobs, violence and denial of democracy. For good measure, Uni was wrecked including our famous medical school. Private education, the judiciary and private health care (Blue Sisters) were frontally attacked. Broadcasting was hijacked specifically to produce “a Socialist generation”.
PN can’t have been that bad, as its major policies – independence, EU, VAT, free trade and broadcasting are now also embraced (allegedly) by Labour. Virtually all our infrastructure is PN-built – hospital, airport, freeport (though L. Sant did chuck 3rd grade concrete into the sea, at a cost of over Lm50m), roads, osmosis plants.
Minghajr passjoni issa – please explain what it is you see in the LP. This is your big chance to convert a few floaters. Seize the moment!
Strange how just one word – Mintoff, brings all the termites out of the woodwork!
Just like China badly needed Chairman Mao in the late 40’s even though it now seems to have been a case of overkill, hindsight should also teach us that Mintoff was the right man at the right time for our country.
Are you going to delete this comment as well Daphne or are you going to put up an alternative viewpoint?
[Daphne – I have deleted none of your comments, Frank. But I have asked you a question: you were not in Malta in the 1960s, so doesn’t that mean that you are parroting other people’s experiences? China did not need Chairman Mao: Chairman Mao destroyed China not built it, and over and above that, his policies resulted in the death by starvation of many millions of people over just a few years, though this fact was concealed from the democratic west. People resorted to cannibalism. Everything Mintoff wanted to do, but failed so utterly miserably at, was done by Fenech Adami with no stress, much happiness and a fabulous surge in GDP growth. Despite the propaganda, the ultimate verdict on Mintoff, even before his death, is that he was a total and utter failure at everything he tried to do. He couldn’t even better the way of life of the working class. Fenech Adami did that, through building a burgeoning economy, throwing education open to all, and making it possible for the children of ‘workers’ to move out and up, while the workers themselves began earning more and more and buying the trappings of middle class life. People hate Mintoff deservedly, because he was destructive not constructive. Who gives a damn now what his intentions were? It’s the results that count, and his results for Malta were GDP per capita of around US$3,000 – in 1985, when the rest of Europe was living it up.]
Please Daphne do not try to rewrite history, you know far better than that.
Eddie Fenech Adami was a political lightweight who came along at the right time after Mintoff did all the hard yards.
Mintoff haters will never accept that fact so I am only whistling in the wind trying to talk sense to you.
[Daphne – Unbelievable.]
Franks says: “Eddie Fenech Adami was a political lightweight who came along at the right time after Mintoff did all the hard yards.”
O God, O God, O God.
If there was an Ig Nobel prize for statements of the century, this would have been one of those.
It is either that Frank was not living in Malta between 1971 and 1987, or else he must have been one of those animals more equal than others, that had his chin fully submerged in the socialist trough.
[Daphne – He wasn’t in Malta. He’s Australian. His parents emigrated there when he was a child. It’s amazing how there’s political segregation even in Maltese emigration: the Mintoffjani went to Australia and the non-Mintoffjani (Nationalists, Stricklandjani, Boffisti) went to Canada, the USA and Britain.]
Frank, I was 10 when Mintoff succeeded in getting into power and 26 when he (or his puppet-on-a-string successor) were finally kicked out of office.
He succeeded in completely ruining my childhood, teens and part of my 20s. I still have vivid memories (and instinctively still do it) of lowering my voice when speaking against the MPM/LP/MLP/Socialists party as well as hiding the In…….Taghna (remember no Nazzjon and neither Malta could be used) in between other papers when going out to buy it from the agent.
I also have vivid memories of those nice aristocrats of the dockyard workers, running after us (18-24 year olds) at the university with chains, just because we decided to have a sit-down protest in front students’ house.
I also remember a couple of MLP thugs putting a large boulder in front of my car on the tal-Barrani Road and a traffic policeman, to whom I, quite naively, decided to report the incident. Do you know what he did? He turned the other way and sped off in the direction of Luqa.
I also have beautiful memories of a nice day at Rabat, when I was shot at by police officer, just because I decided to take a walk up Main Street, where a group of well-meaning thugs were perpetrating arson on the Nationalist Party club, in broad daylight.
I also remember being discriminated against during the my final exams at the university, just because I was a leader of a student group and not very visible at that. We had been repeatedly warned by one of the professors that this would be a sure route to failure.
I also remember waiting for over eight months for a telephone line until a friend of mine within the MLP informed me that my name was blacklisted but he was able to fix it.
I also remember having been informed by a certain police inspector (not Kev) that it was their business to keep track of everyone and everything. The meaning behind it was very clear to me at that time.
I also remember (and I still feel the shame today) the way the Sicilians used to look at us with contempt and pity when we got off the ferry desperate for supplies of toothpaste, pasta, chocolate, women’s basic nylon tights, rice, tea and other basics. Now those Sicilians come here to ask for our cooperation in setting up courses for them and to partner in scientific research.
I am afraid that if I keep this up, I shall fill this blog and that is not fair as it would be equate to the hogging of space.
But please stop insulting those of us who lived through those times.
Frank Scicluna
You could try asking yourself why there are ‘Mintoff haters’ at all. More specifically, you could ask the ‘Mintoff haters’ why they feel that way. The answers are pretty much spelled out in people’s experiences. Those who eulogise and adore him are not necessarily the best informed. It appears that you are among them.
Albert Farrugia says:
Thursday, 18 February at 2340hrs
We would have been in the EU in 1972, instead of having to beg on our knees for 14 years.
So now its “foresight” and no longer “hindsight” that the EU is good for us? And what kind of sight was Alfred Sant using when he froze the application?
Is this another attempt by Labour to rewrite history? Or is this just some derriere licking?
We would have definaltely been better off with the British when it came to landscaping and building colonial houses in this country than having a bunch of uneducated architects who have ruined Malta.
We have no enviroment and will never have one. It’s too late. We’d rather stay behind the environment of a compter nowadays.
[Daphne – Pat, believe me but I would rather have no fields and computers than fields and no computers. Ideally, we’d have both. But back in the days when there were fields, nobody had the luxury of cavorting in them, or the inclination to do so.]
“Mr Mintoff’s plan is new and strange”.
– famous first words.
There is nothing special in these pictures, it’s all history and I think every maltese should be proud to have such a great leader in Mr. Dom Mintoff, who fought all his life to make Malta a real nation.
[Daphne – They always said you were really a Mintoffjan and kept it hidden, Carm, but I never believed them.]
You amaze me, Daphne! Is there one single person in Malta that you DON’T know?
[Daphne – Oh, hundreds of thousands. Sometimes I’m out in a cafe or restaurant or whatever, and I look around and think to myself, ‘Who are all these people?’]
They must feel really lucky to never have met you then!
Frank, we had to accept what destiny threw at us from 1971 – 87 and you didn’t live a single minute of it. WE DID. So go back and adore your alla tat-tafal li hadd ma jahmlu. Le, Mintoff la qatt kien statista, la politiku u l-anqas ragel. Kien dittatur a la Cinese. Bhal Mao, bhal Mugabe, bhal Idi Amin Dada, bhal Ceaucescu…. inkomplu?
Carm,
yes, it is history but not as PL know it. Go through any Labour media you want and you’ll find that integration is hardly ever mentioned. Mintoff is invariably described as having always been in favour of independence.
Mintoff fought to boost his over-inflated ego.
He exploited the poor and the uneducated working class.
I come from a working class family. My parents are illiterate but they have great values. They valued their integrity more than the pennies Mintoff handed out to the working class for their votes.
Mintoff was nothing but a self-serving, stubborn, selfish, manipulative despot. He brought nothing but shame to Malta.
This video deals with the two largest calamities to hit Malta in the 20th century: World War II and Mintoff.
How old are you, Mike? Where you around in the 60s or are you simply parroting what you were told? Dom Mintoff was exactly what Malta needed in those days.
[Daphne – Frank, didn’t you say you were in Australia at the time? That means you must be parroting what you were told. Mike is just a couple of years younger than I am. If my life was scarred by Mintoff’s ‘politics’, then his was too. In fact, we are the generation that despises Mintoff most, with good reason. We were the chief victims of his ‘policies’.]
No Daphne, do you really think that even though we were thousands of miles away in Australia we did not know what was happening in our country?
[Daphne – My point, Frank, is that you have just suggested that Mike C doesn’t know what he is talking about because he wasn’t around (in Malta) in the 1960s and must be parroting what others told him. Clearly, the same applies to you, particularly when you consider that the only way you could get news about Malta all the way there in Australia was via letters from friends and family, which took – what? – a month to get to you? Also, if they were Mintoffjani like you, that’s the story they would have given you. Mike C, on the contrary, was raised under Mintoff by a mother who actively fought against the human rights abuses perpetrated by that regime, while they were taking place. He is perfectly placed to know just how serious those abuses were.]
Both Mike and yourself must have very little memory of Labour being in government at your age, if you did you would not have understood what was happening anyway. You must have both been ‘victims of policies’ that you were simply told about.
[Daphne – I understood exactly what was going on, Frank. My family was in the direct line of fire, for a start, and I was a peculiarly intelligent and perceptive child with parents who didn’t do the ‘Maltese thing’ of not speaking in front of the children.
A child is perfectly able to understand what is happening, for example, when she and her wailing younger sisters are woken up at night by police turning the house over and threatening to take her father to jail because there were anonymous reports that he had been seen using a walkie-talkie in his car. It was a Dictaphone, and he was dictating letters for his secretary to type. The police had never seen one and were unable to understand either the concept or the function.
A child is also perfectly able to understand what is happening when the police turn up again and actually do take her father off to headquarters for interrogation at night because the price of a bottle of cough mixture he imports has risen by TWO MILS beyond the state-mandated price order.
A child knows what is happening when her family is subjected to sustained attack, with telephone tapping and direct threats of theft and violence made by the prime minister himself, because her grandfather is president of Malta’s leading private bank, which the prime minister wishes to seize because he knows that he cannot control the country’s economy – or private businesses, through granting or refusing loans – without full control of the banks. A child has direct, traumatic experience of the financial and above all, the psychological, consequences when that bank is eventually seized and her grandfather collapses and never recovers from the severe duress, causing him to spend the last years of his life in illness.
A child knows what is happening when she grows up around the corner from Il-Fusellu and knows where he gets his money from and who he is ‘fronting’, because the cabinet minister he fronts has nephews and nieces with whom she plays in the street and its common knowledge. In fact, the nephews and nieces live in a house that their uncle the cabinet minister requisitioned and gave to his sister.
A child knows what is happening when all those she knows who have empty flats and houses recruit people to sleep in them so that the state won’t seize them.
And a child knows what is happening when she is standing in a townhouse balcony with her grandmother and a vast throng of thugs on their way to attack The Times building a corner away attack her grandparents’ house as well, smashing the balcony windows and hitting and splitting her grandmother’s head but narrowly missing hers with a beer bottle.
Those are just a few things, Frank – very, very few.
I was 6 when Mintoff was elected prime minister, and that means I was actually a teenager for much of his tenure and married with a child and another on the way when his puppet Mifsud Bonnici was voted out in 1987.
I had no hope of tertiary education and I entered the job market when there were no jobs to be had, when the vast majority of people, including me, took home Lm28 a week, and when GDP per capita was something like US$4,000. It was a time when the country was run by violent thugs and seriously corrupt cabinet ministers and their hangers-on. If you think corruption is Tonio Fenech taking a trip in George Fenech’s plane, you should have been here then. It was like life in a violent, corrupt South American dictatorship.
The Labour government of 1971 to 1987 was a 16-year hiatus that broke the country’s back, demoralised its people, ruined our economy, and bred fear and hatred.
No wonder people have been voting Labour out since 1981, except for that ill-thought-out 1996 adventure which they rushed to undo after just 22 months.
Safely ensconced in Australia, you cannot possibly have known the stresses under which people lived here. Suffice it to say that in 1985 I spent a couple of days of my honeymoon in Budapest (we took a boat down the river from Vienna) which was then one of the most miserable places behind the Iron Curtain. I actually remember telling my husband, “Why do people make such a fuss? It’s not that bad. It’s just like being in Malta.” That was little naive me, having never known any life other than stressful, barren life under a Labour government, thinking that life behind the Iron Curtain was OK because it was like life in ‘free’ Malta. That should tell you enough about ‘the Mintoff generation’.]
The REAL victims of those days where the people who Archbishop Gonzi and the Church shamefully turned their backs upon.
[Daphne – Don’t be so damned ridiculous, Frank. Given a choice between the threat of being buried in unconsecrated ground when I am no longer alive, and being able to relive my age 6 to 23 years post 1987 instead of pre, I would go for the latter any day, and f**k the unconsecrated ground when I’m dead. The consecrated ground/marriage in the sacristry issues are petty compared to what my generation had to endure for a full-on 16 years. It was a problem largely in the mind, anyway, caused by the religious fixations of those who were – ironically, for socialists – superstitious about Catholicism. All those brave suldati tal-azzar, flapping around in a superstitious panic because the archbishop told them they were committing a mortal sin. Unbelievable.]
So, have you got it off your chest now, Daphne?
[Daphne – No. It will stay on my chest until I die.]
There is no way that your points can be responded to individually without spending all night typing on this computer BUT you have made it crystal clear that your childhood was one of privilege that thousands of Maltese families did not enjoy.
[Daphne – That is the point, Frank. Being privileged was forbidden. The privileged had to be persecuted and brought down by as many means as possible. Rather than raising up the ‘workers’, Mintoff tried to bring down ‘the privileged’ to their level. He should have done what Fenech Adami did – left the privileged alone and worked hard on building GDP and education. Fenech Adami got results. Mintoff failed. He failed, Frank. Face it. In 1987 Labour had been in government for 16 years and this country and its people were among the poorest and most deprived in Europe. 16 years! Look what the Nationalist Party did in that time – overhauled the country, sky-rocketed the GDP figures AND got us into the European Union, despite that 22-month Sant interruption.]
Families who were forced to go thousands of miles away from their homeland in order to give their families a decent future…just like my father had to do.
[Daphne – You’re talking about the aftermath of World War II. The whole of Europe was in an economic shambles. It wasn’t a peculiarly Maltese problem.]
Not many people in those days were fortunate enough to have a grandfather who was president of Malta’s leading private bank therefore your family could not have possibly known what the people that Dom Mintoff was democratically elected to represent were going through.
[Daphne – On the contrary, we did. I wasn’t at all sheltered, was exposed to the realities of life, and had parents who took a very dim view of any sort of spoiled or silly behaviour. I am not questioning the fact that there was poverty. I am saying that Mintoff’s way of dealing with it was wrong, stupid and ultimate dangerous. It is quite evident in retrospect that his driving emotion was not love of the working classes, whom he patently despised, but bitter hatred and resentment towards those he perceived as privileged. And that is precisely why his efforts were all destructive rather than constructive, and why, after 16 years of Labour, Malta was in a far worse mess than it was in 1971.]
Your hatred for anyone who is not amongst the wannabe elite, double-barreled surname society is very obvious but you must remember Daphne that Malta is not only made up of families like your own, there are just as many like the ones who voted for Mintoff in the past and will vote for the PL today.
[Daphne – I do not have a double-barrelled surname. My family name is Vella. The mistake you make, like all socialists – even Maltese socialists living in Australia, apparently – is to confuse equality of rights and opportunity with equality in status and riches. You are also foolish enough not to know – perhaps because your own emigration experience was privileged – that the vast majority of emigrants who left Malta for a better life in Australia in the 1950s and even 1960s actually ended up living a much worse life for the first few years, in shanties and camps with a single tap and burying their faeces in holes dug around their corrugated-metal huts. This is not my opinion: these experiences are documented through interviews carried out by the immigration authorities there, and which I found recently and unexpectedly on an official website.]
Anyway that’s enough because I realise that I’m only wasting my timeand effort trying to talk sense to you and your Nationalist biased readers whose opinions can never be changed.
If there are any grammatical or spelling mistakes I apologise but I can not be bothered going over what I wrote.
Sorry Frank, but as I have already written here, I passed through similar episodes as Daphne and I was far from privileged.
My father was a worker (oh, that famous word) with six children to bring up, working (up to 1979) from 8 to 5 and then doing extra work from 6 to 11, so that he could give us all the best education and when required, pay for it.
He also suffered the humiliation of being out of work for years (thanks to your Mintoff and the dreaded March 31) when my youngest sister was still 4 years old.
So as you can see, these stories happened also to those who were not privileged and I do hope that thanks to me, my children and their children, will never trust the socialists until at least the third generation has grown up and gone.
Frank,
No one in my family owned a business and we certainly had precious little. I was the first one to go to university, something I had no hope of doing under Mintoff or KMB, who actually closed down my (private, not church) school and forced me to study at underground private lessons.
I still remember the ‘party’ telephone lines, my father having to smuggle a remote-controlled car in for me (yes, they were illega), a childhood without chocolate (may sound silly but it’s still a fact) because it couldn’t be imported and it wasn’t made here, no toothpaste, no pasta, no tea, not daring to publicly criticize the government – the list goes on. Free market economy? You must be kidding.
Foreign interference act? That was law.
Requisition of property was the order of the day.
Computers – ha ha ha ha
Cordless phones – grounds for arrest
Fusellu? God bless Louis Bartolo
Private hospitals – oh, please. Remember the Blue Sisters?
Believe me, the so-called “working classes” were far better off financially than we were, as their parents did not bother sacrificing everything to give their children the best education they could.
I will curse Mintoff until my last breath for all the hatred he had towards ‘his betters’ and for reducing Malta to the shambles it was in 1987, out of pure spite, hdura and lanzit.
He really epitomised the socialist maxim of punishing those who succeed to reward those who are too fucking lazy to do anything or get anywhere.
Daphne, I gave you a standing ovation in front of the computer after I read your reply to Frank Scicluna.
Frank,
Although I am at work, I am going to have to take the time to reply to the crap you have written, and make up for it later.
So in the miserable spirit of your hero, you can be doubly happy about pissing off a nasty Nationalist, once because of the outrageous and repulsive bullshit you’ve written, and once because you’ve lengthened my working day.
Now if I followed the teachings of your hero, I’d just boast about putting one up on my employer and tell people how clever I am, but I managed to escape Mintoff’s indoctrination of bumming and mediocrity so I’m going to have to work late on a day when I wasn’t planning to.
But I’m not just a nasty Nationalist, if anything I’m principally a non-Mintoffjan, and I’m a proud Maltese who despairs that there are still Maltese who write like you do and evidently respect Mintoff when you should revile him for the damage he did to your country, and continues to do today as a stain and a taint on the Labour Party. So I’m afraid you’re not going to get away with glibly whitewashing/re-writing historic fact.
Like Daphne, I too am from Valletta. I was born in the 1960s and when Mintoff was elected in 1971 I was approaching my 5th birthday. My first memories of Maltese politics are of catching the school bus and going to primary school before the 1971 election and laughing and joking with the other kids who were split evenly between the Mintoffjani and the Nazzjonalisti, playing a game with marbles, the mechanics of which I can’t remember, but which revolved around odd and even and which we substituted with Mintoffjani and Nazzjonalisti.
But it was all in good humour and we thought nothing of it. One might argue that children should know nothing of politics at all, but if they must, this was the right light-hearted attitude.
Then Labour scraped into power and my next memories are those of Labour thugs regularly entering Valletta, terrorising pedestrians and trashing the shops in Republic Street. The favourites used to be Wembley Store, Square Deal and Cordina, amongst others. This and much worse went on all the way to 1987 and even beyond. I could write long essays about many other episodes of violence but I’ll let others do that, or you can look them up – they’re matters of public record.
By the time I was catching public buses to sit for my O-levels, most of the Mintoffjani friends who I’d exchanged marbles with were no more. They were either no longer Labourites, were ashamed to be Labourites and hid it, had emigrated away from our Mintoffjan paradise to Australia (interesting that, no?) or were no longer on speaking terms with us. Another great Mintoff legacy. Conflict and division.
Daphne has given you a long list of reasons for Mintoff-hating, as you put it, based on experiences during our lifetimes, and I and many others could continue to add to that list, but instead of continuing in the vein above, referring to the day to day experience, I’ll address the wider issue. Incidentally, hate is the wrong word; the correct word is contempt.
Those of us who do not limit our reading to L-orizzont know enough to talk about events before their lifetime. I didn’t have to be around to know that the Allies won World War II.
Whilst on the topic of L-orizzont, I have had occasion to visit their printing press. Like other newspapers, it reproduces front pages related to momentous events in history as posters and puts them up on the wall in its corridors. Only in its case, events such as the Kennedy assassinations, the moon landings, the fall of the Berlin wall (they probably regret that, as evidenced elsewhere in this blog) don’t make it. It’s as if they never happened. The only momentous events in history are Labour election victories and Labour leadership elections. Not the best source for getting the wider picture. And what happened to AS’s famous divorce between the MLP and the GWU?
It is apt that this video starts with war, because if there is one thing which defines Mintoff it is conflict. His leadership of the MLP was founded on conflict with Boffa. Boffa wanted to negotiate with the British about the run-down of the dry-docks, a process which started immediately after the war and not with independence, and Mintoff wanted to fight, as usual.
And he lost, as usual, after beating Boffa and beginning the decline of the Labour Party. But he took us with him on that downhill voyage and while he might not be the specific reason why YOU ended up in Australia he is the reason many others did, there and elsewhere.
His whole history is one of conflict, conflict with his own party, with the British, the church, the opposition, his predecessors, his successors, the doctors, the teachers, the bankers, businesses, students, non-servile unions and the rest. Conflict with everyone who dared contradict his messianic obsessions. And the country continues to feel the effect of the seeds of conflict which he sowed.
He is additionally contemptible because his penchant for conflict was not even supported by personal bravery; he turned out to be a coward when push came to shove. In the fifties he sent his colleagues such as Agatha Barbara and Lorry Sant to lead the riots and face the police, and ran and hid himself.
You should remember that, having been in your teens then. Wonderful thing, Facebook, isn’t it? Although if he or his successors were still in charge it would be blocked like in Iran or China.
And just a reminder – the riots I’m talking about are those when your buddies were stopping ambulances and pulling the patients out of them to enforce a strike – an example of the depth of the cesspool into which Mintoff dragged the MLP. Were you there I wonder? A cesspool it’s been mired in for the last 60 years and in which it will remain until it expunges him and his miserable legacy of conflict, instigation to violence, mediocrity and making do with crap, typical of misers like him.
Again, the war is a very apt topic. The losing side was made up of the three Axis powers, Germany, Italy and Japan. They were proud nations before becoming warmongering totalitarian states, and have somehow had to reconcile themselves with their past and become functioning democratic members of the international community again.
All have approached it differently. The Germans have done a full mea culpa, not least because of the Nuremberg trials and the public exposure of the concentration camps. The Italians have let us know that Italian fascism was a one-man band and that everyone was in the resistance except Mussolini himself, and the Japanese have taken the attitude of: “War? What war? There wasn’t any war? Hey, do you mean the time they nuked us? We were the victims.”
And their prime ministers continue to visit the graves of their war criminals to this day. They have turned round and tried to bury the evidence of their aggression and hide it behind “victimisation”.
And although on an obviously much smaller scale, that is a perfect analogy with the Labour Party and its approach to the disaster that was the Labour government from 1971 to 1987. Only the Labour Party chooses to use the damp squib that was the conflict with the church as their “nuking”.
How that is the PN’s fault is beyond me. You could hardly expect them not to take advantage of Mintoff shooting himself in the foot (which he did again in 1998) but to turn around and blame the PN for a conflict between the MLP and the Catholic Church is ludicrous. To use it as an excuse to subvert democracy and oppress opposition is despicable.
A little knowledge of history obtained beyond the boundaries of L-orizzont is also pertinent. People forget that Mintoff’s foe in all this was Archbishop Gonzi, who while still a lowly monsignor was elected to the senate on behalf of the Labour Party. So this was very much an internal MLP battle, much like the one between Mintoff and Alfred Sant, and for pretty much the same reasons, believing that the ideals of THEIR party had been betrayed by their respective successors (obviously not immediate successors).
And as usual, Malta feels the brunt of the Labour Party’s shortcomings. History is such an interesting thing, is it not? Especially when you don’t leave bits of it out!
This church issue is also relevant today, in terms of the many debates going on in this blog and elsewhere. Those of us who like me ardently wish for a truly secular Malta, cannot but hold Mintoff in contempt for the way he handled the issue. If you think of yourself as liberal or even progressive (if ever there were two misused and maligned terms), you cannot escape feeling let down. If only instead of fighting and threatening he had decided to talk, maybe today we would be much further down the path of secular statehood. But that was not his way.
Finally, a word about Eddie Fenech Adami. Now that is someone you can truly look up to. You choose to fly in the face of accepted reality and call him a lightweight.
Incidentally he is a “lightweight” who has repeatedly beaten all your “heavyweight” heroes. One could take you to task in detail and speak at length about his achievements and Malta’s gains under his stewardship, but his principle merit was to steer us out of a potential disaster and back to the return of full democracy which suffered so severely under Mintoff.
I shudder to think what would have become of us had it not been for his measured strategy of restraint and reconciliation. Whilst it is true that he could hardly have fired 75% of the police force and prosecuted most of the Labour Party echelons, including those who claim to be moderates today, it is also true that the option existed and would have been a legitimate one. Time will tell whether or not this was a mistake.
But the fact remains that he is the principle reason why if you choose to live here you can read different opinions from yours without fear of victimisation, and ironically why you are free to attempt to re-write history without the threat of violence.
The downside of democracy is that it is committed to protect those who would work against it, and though galling, it is a price we are willing to pay. But don’t expect us not to respond with vehemence and determination.
There is video evidence of this shit, so its pointless to argue with Frank.
It’s like trying to convince a fundamentalist Christian that evolution is real. Regardless of the overwhelming evidence, they still don’t accept it, because of all the brainwashing they’ve been through. They cannot tell the difference between left, right, good or evil.
“you and your Nationalist biased readers whose opinions can never be changed”
Nationalist-biased? Anti-Labour till the day I die. Daphne’s post said it all.
And, lest we forget http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI2BxaYmNyA
And, just for a laugh http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGJ-rnd6cds
The last bits of the video say it all, especially when, as young children with no entertaining television programmes to watch, watching parliamentary sessions was considered entertainment, simply because of the antics of MPs such as Lorry Sant.
“a childhood without chocolate (may sound silly but it’s still a fact) because it couldn’t be imported and it wasn’t made here”
Coincidentally, today I came across a shop selling tubes of “orange chocolate” sweets, and bought a packet for nostalgia’s sake. Remember them, anyone? The insignificant little blob of melty chocolate in the centre was probably the only foreign chocolate we had under Labour – possibly because they had classified them as boiled sweets.
I am only repeating what Alfred Sant said about Mintoff TRADITUR.
if anyone thinks that Mintoff had original ideas he might re-think that “The Prime Minister Ugo Mifsud after taking the oath, formally asked the British Government, for the first time, for Dominion Status.” – 1932.
Frank – when I was a child we lived abroad and my parents would often comment about Malta and how ‘everyone knows each other’ . I believed it literally and was so disappointed when we returned to Malta and my mother DIDN’T know everyone.
I also remember that in Sliema everyone used to keep their front door unlocked.
That was a wonderful world Marika. Sadly, we are now in 2010 and everything has been turned upside down…yet some people are still determined to call it progress!
Frank Scicluna, whoever you are, may I suggest that you consider Daphne’s remarks to you as bed-time reading material. Maybe tiftahhlek mohhok to what REALLY happened.
What irks me, D, is that many of the corrupt gangsters of the Mintoff era got to keep their money, increased their wealth and have the gall to ponce around as if they’re the cat’s whiskers.
They educated their children in the best schools abroad, using their ill-gotten gains and now think they’re actually from the very social circles which their lot had tried so hard to eliminate.
[Daphne – Well, that’s how most of Europe’s aristocracy started out, Tony, as robber barons or people who were rewarded for doing the dirty on others. Quote from the BBC series Goldplated, a developer’s wife to a member of the country set who had accused her of coming from a family of gangsters: ‘We’re not gangsters, love. We just know where our money comes from, unlike your lot.’]
Frank – some things were wonderful but many weren’t. Nostalgia is not the best forensic tool.
@ carmel
I think that you did not observe well Mintoff’s political career. Mintoff never worked for Malta but solely for Mintoff. Starting off with the split from Boffa, the integration plan simply for himself to have a seat in the House of Commons/Lords – and here please note that Mintoff is more British than the British – he tried to disrupt the Borg Olivier independence process because he was not able to negotiate it himself, created a fictitious victory in March 1979 to be seen in history that he had achieved something for Malta when it was simply a natural end to contract, and which incidentally had to end in !974 had the PN been elected in 1971, allowed the cronies around him to manipulate the 1981 election, replaced himself with KMB as leader when he realized that there was no way he could avoid a defeat at the polls by Eddie, and so on and so forth. Maybe somebody would like to add more to this list of Mintoff’s achievements. Please don’t mention the introduction of social services because that was the trend in Europe at the time same as the introduction of the payee system.
Everything is pretty much correct except for the “had to end in 1974” part.
The PN contract, done by Gorg Borg Olivier in 1964, was to last 10 years but could be renewed in 1974. Instead, Mintoff came to power in 1971 and drafted a renewal contract in 1972. This contract was to last seven years, give Malta more money and was to be unrenewable.
So yes, the closest thing to saviour of Maltese oppression Mintoff could over have attributed to him is the fact that he made a contract unrenewable.
But when compared to another certain individual who achieved independence in 1964, his little contract sidenote is really not noteworthy or public holiday worthy or national holiday worthy.
Opportunism must be in the DNA of the PL.
To me Mintoff is the personification of a country pimp who prostituted Malta wherever that satisfied his whims. On other occasions he did so because, seriously lacking any form of economic and political creativity, it was his last resort to keep the country going.
Anyone ever wondered how Labour and indeed Malta would have been had Mintoff not ousted Boffa back then?
Certainly a much better and culturally healthier country.
Allochronology, eh? It’s quite possible that we would have been granted dependency status, had we asked for it. No Dominic the Lord Mintoff of Cospicua there.
Not simply the integration issue but the general political landscape in Malta in the decades to follow.
Actually I wanted to say much better and culturally much healthier …. without Mintoff.
@ Jonathan
Thank you for the correction.
We can never tell what new conditions would have been negotiated had the contract been up for an extension 1974 under a PN administration. For sure we would not have witnessed the embarrasing Operation Exit, which took place over the Christmas and New Year season of 1971. I think in this context everybody remembers that Mintoff always used to save controversial decision for the festive season.
The name MINTOFF gives me the shivers. People my age know what we had to go through. My family had to bear a lot and I mean a lot. With my mother’s English maiden name, they had targeted all of my family especially my father who was a policeman. He had to resign before his time in the force was up because of the hdura and threatening letters he got.
Another of my uncles used to work with the British Forces when the Maltese government took over. He was a store-keeper, but they sent him to dig trenches.To me and my family Mintoff was a despot, and lot’s more, but I cannot type the word. I abhor the man and what he stood for.
@ Frank Scicluna – I am from Sliema but NOT privileged. My maternal grandmother was a maid. Because we supported the Nationalist Party even though we were working class, we were persecuted. Our house had no bathroom – just a sink and a toilet. We had to go to grandma’s house for a bath. When my parents applied for social housing, the minister of that time (won’t mention his name because he has since passed away) after having sent people to see where we lived, decided against giving us a house – ghax dawk Nazzjonalisti.
[Daphne – Funny you should mention him. He’s the one I mentioned earlier, who requisitioned a Sliema townhouse for his sister and her family.]
Yes, I am sure we’re talking about the same one.
I forgot to mention that my late father, who was a policeman, couldn’t feed his family on what he was paid, in those glorious Mintoff years, and yet he was barred by regulations from doing any extra work elsewhere. When he did some carpentry jobs (behind closed doors), he was reported to the authorities. That’s how privileged we were.
You are both talking of Patrick Holland who requisitioned more houses than he had hair in his head. He requisitioned a house of ours in Hamrun and one day this man turned up behind my door to pay the LM18 per annum for a large corner house.
I told him to change the LM18 into mils and stuff them up the ministers a***. Nearly all the houses in Pembroke were given to his supporters and this is a known fact.
Daphne, is Carmel the same one who lived very close to your parents? If he is the same one, I can vouch that he used to use to hate Mintoff. I was present on many an occasion when it happened. So how can he now say that Mintoff fought all his life to make Malta a nation. Hallina, Carmel.
[Daphne – Yes, he is.]
Malta is still reaping the venom Mintoff seeded. The political hatred and polarity that still exist in Malta is the legacy of the Mintoff reign.
Daphne, you forgot to mention Lorry Sant whose gangs terrorised anyone who got in their way, but you have articulated the Mintoff era in the most eloquent manner.
You know how to rake Mintoff’s admirers over the coal and you seem to have acquired a perfect science in your technique. You always go for the jugular. Prosit!
Din tad dahq. Jien kont nahdem l-income tax department. Kien l-ewwel dipartiment li dahhal il-computer. Wara ftit granet bghat ghalina il-kummissarju tat-taxxi u qalilna ara ma issemmux il-kelma computer ghidu biss li hemm magna ghax Mintoff ma jridx jisma il-kelma computer.
I was born in 1965 and grew up in Mintoff’s Malta.
With his party and henchmen Mintoff was the ruin of my otherwise serene childhood. The reasons are many and I needn’t go into detail right now. It’s all been amply covered on this blog and elsewhere.
We lived in fear. We lived in worry. We lived in continuous indignation for the way the country was being run, for the way our freedom was being undermined. All I can say is that words will never describe those dark times as well as they try too.
@Daphne: let’s assume all you say is true, including your interpretation of history which, like all interpretations, is coloured by personal perspectives. And the moral of the story? That the PN are justified in their present shameless discrimination, unbridled favouritism, reckless dispensation of civil service jobs (by contract) to their blue-eyed boys, denial of certain civil rights like divorce to the whole population… they certainly paid themselves handsomely in high dividends for the tear-gas they inhaled at Tal-Barrani. None is so blind as he who will not see. I shredded my PN tessera years ago. Malta: a PN paradise. Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles.
The way you speak I doubt very much that you really had a PN tessera or else your memory is too short.
Can you please mention the cases of shameless discrimination that you are speaking about? Maybe the fact that Lawrence MIntoff is heading the legal department of ME, or maybe that the Labour Party’s CEO is an employee of AirMalta or even better, that at least two prominent pro Labour professors hold very high positions within the university that could only have been offered to them by the government?
Or that prominent anti EU persons are now working deep within the EU division of the Office of the Prime Minister?
[Daphne – Or Marlene Mizzi, kept on as chairman of Sea Malta 1998 to 2003, and then again after that, until she ‘resigned voluntarily’.]
Is this the shameless discrimination?
And as for the civil rights (or really one civil right – divorce – and just to make it clear – I agree with it), are you certain that Joseph Muscat will be the champion of this? The last time I heard him speak he was sitting pretty on the fence – promising to put it to a free vote – which basically means that it would not pass.
Can you also list, with names, these contracts to the blue-eyed boys?
The Maltese have this habit of seeing corruption everywhere (perhaps because it was institutionalised under Labour), but I would rather live with this government, being able to criticise, say what I want, go where I want, having all the necessary 21st century commodities, than living in a North Korean Utopia under Labour.
Hang on Francois – my comment was delibarately purely factual and non-personal. If you want me to mention personal, no problem: my father was a salaried employee of a company nationalised by Mintoff in 1975.
Mintoff used the company’s non-contributory pension fund to buy the equipment, so dad got Lm2500 in terminal benefits, rather than the Lm7,000 he was entitled to. Viva s-Salvatur tal-haddiema.
Worse, under the new owners – Mintoff’s hakma – employees were required to punch in rather than sign in. The measure was imposed without consultation and the UHM took the very mild industrial action of telling its members not to punch in. For his trouble, dad got suspended for eight months without pay. A married man, with six children at private/church schools. Viva s-Salvatur tal-Haddiema.
The PN are far from great, but compared to that bloodthirsty rabble with a chip on their shoulder the size of the Preluna, they’re bloody light years apart.
My greatest joy in life is that my children don’t even know what Labour in power means. Sadly, they may soon find out (though I believe that any democratically elected government deserves our cooperation and I would like to think that the LP is not what it was in Mintoff’s time).
“PN paradise”, my arse. Of course the party rewards its acolytes. But anyone who has the will and the ability gets on in this country under the PN – Laburisti included. And good luck to them all, I say. Unlike socialists, we don’t begrudge success or wealth – honestly gained – to anyone.
@ Francois-Marie Arouet
“I shredded my PN tessera years ago” – good for you, no great loss to the PN especially since you obviously have not voted PN for the last several elections.
You make allegations but you don’t have one single proof of ‘shameless discrimination, unbridled favouritism, reckless dispensation of civil service jobs (by contract) to their blue-eyed boys…’ Careful though, Marisa and Wenzu could very well contradict you.
Until you can give us an example, just be quiet!
@Snoopy: why should I lie about having been tesserat for two decades when I’m writing (out of necessity) under a pen-name? Use your logic, if you have any. You don’t think I’m really Voltaire, do you?
And are you surprised that some PN supporters have quit the party in disgust? As to mentioning names, I know quite a few but they are not public figures like Wenzu Mintoff and hence must go unmentioned. If you don’t know any, you must have been living on another planet. Furthermore, I am not criticising them but whoever employed them. I did not use the word “corruption” – you did.
I’m extremely wary of using that word and am in the habit of choosing my vocabulary with care. If Labourites are in employment under a PN Government, so what? Does it mean there is no discrimination and favouritism and nepotism? It’s a non-sequitur. You obviously do not know what goes on. As I said, none is so blind as he who will not see. That’s why politicians thrive: they have supporters who jump to their defense even when they are indefensible. Sometimes, with due respect, I wonder whether it is worthwhile arguing with your kind. I guess in this democratic country where fear of reprisal reigns, blogs like this offer one of the few possibilities and one should be thankful for small mercies. Enough said.
Francois-Marie Arouet
Could your disgruntlement have anything to do with the Maltese embassy in Paris?
Well, thinking over, I am not surprised. Others have done the same, the latest being a certain Marisa Micallef. The problem is that most of these have done so not because they believe in high moral values, but because they have tried to obtain some favour and this was not given to them (though they forget that they have been given many others in the past).
I am not one of those. In my 30 years of professional life, I have had setbacks, have seen others move forward quite fast and was discriminated against (and I have very close links with a number of high officials in the Nationalist Party).
But all of these discriminations could be traced to the internal politics of the place where I work. These exist and are very difficult to eliminate completely without direct government intervention which in my opinion is very dangerous and should not even be thought of, let alone tried. Basically we would be returning back to the 1980s, where you needed a godfather to be able to have even your basic rights.
But when it comes to voting in elections, I have never taken any decisions based on direct personal interest but I have always looked at the country’s interest. What is good for the country, is good for me. And thanks to the transformation of the Maltese political and economical situation, and especially with EU membership (thanks to Eddie Fenech Adami and the PN and for sure not thanks to Joseph Muscat and the PL) I have been successful here in Malta but even more importantly internationally.
The secret is to stop envying others who have quick but limited success through internal connections. Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face, and just work hard on your ideals and objectives.
Wara li qrajt dan kollu ser ikolli nghidilkom li ghalkemm wasaln 2010 ghadna poplu immatur. Anke int daphne.
Ma nistennix ta t-tip ta dokumentazzjoni min ghandek. Ara tahseb li hawn xi hadd li jista jghid li dak il partit kien hazin jew dak il partit kien tajjeb. F’kull era taz zmien kien min kien ghamel l-istess tajjeb u l-istess hazin li ghamel l-iehor. Int thoss tieghek u haddiehor ihoss tieghu. Allahares noqod sejjer hekk jin ax x’ghandi xi nghid jien li l-um la ghandi biex nixtri karozza u lanqas biex naghmel kamra tal banju maghndi. Xi trid taghmel. Il Mulej hekk ghogbu inkella dak andu jkun id destin. Pero jiena wahda nista nghid li fiz zmien mintoff kont hafna ahjar u qatt ma kont privilagjat u lanqas tal qalba. Il-lum nghix ta veru fqir. U min jghid li mawnx faqar jew mhux f’dinja jew giddieb jew ma jinteressahx mil ghajru ghax joghom fil liri
Jerry, you try hard to appear moderate and progressive (and mature, of course, not like “il-poplu”) but then betray yourself as just another Mintoffjan. Claiming that although you were not privileged you had a better standard of living during the Mintoff regime than you do today requires from the rest of us a suspension of disbelief that would befit more a piece of fantastic fiction.
Jerry, do not take my question in a sarcastic way, but have you tried to think out of the box? Have you tried to take the initiative and be innovative? Have you tried to take the jump or have you just been waiting for government to give you direct help?
There are 101 ways to improve yourself and your situation through the various EU and nationally-funded initiatives; you just need to believe in yourself. Apologies for maybe sounding condescending, but I have been through similar experiences.
So resigned were we to the fact that our lives would always be lived under Labour, that when the 1987 election results were out – on Rai, if I am not mistaken (TVM was showing a cartoon) – the rest of my then “klikka” refused to come out to celebrate, because they couldn’t believe it. Mike C can vouch for that.
“Fusellu? God bless Louis Bartolo”
My thoughts exactly. I clearly remember Louis Bartolo walking into an office where I worked some 15 years or so ago, and introducing himself as “Tafu min jien? Jien dak li qtilt il-Fusellu.” The man serving him stood up and shook his hand, and pretty much reflected the feelings of many.
Mandy I am at a disadvantage. I know nothing about Fusellu nor Louis Bartolo. What I find hard to comprehend however is a person walking into an office full of strangers and boasting that he had killed someone. What sort of society was it during those years?
[Daphne – Our point exactly, Frank! You speak of things of which you know nothing, hence your stance.]
Sorry, I’m none the wiser about Fusello and Bartolo.
[Daphne – Perhaps it’s information you should have found out before you stuck your neck out for Mintoff.]
Fair comment Daphne, I should have made an effort to find out more information which I have now done.
Yes, from everything I read it’s clear that Fusello was a thug and a criminal of the worst kind aided and abetted by ministers in the Labour government.
Having said that, the question has to be asked whether violence and thuggery was only committed by one side of politics.
Violence of any great extent was not part of politics in Malta until a Labour Government was elected in 1971. The next question must therefore be “Why would members and supporters of a government which was ALREADY in power see a need to go on a violent rampage?”
[Daphne – Because they were simple-minded, violent folk and misunderstood the meaning of government and of democracy. They were the sort of people, more or less, who burned the flour mills and ransacked homes of ‘the rich’ in Valletta in the Sette Giugno riots., except this time there was no British army to control them. They could only think in terms of power, enforcing that power, and revenge. And the people they had elected to represent them took advantage of this situation and manipulated it to their own ends, ending up by using them to collect protection money and do their evil bidding.]
It was the Nationalists after all who were desperate to see a democratically elected Labour government – which they saw as being vindictive, corrupt and acting against their best interests, brought down by any means possible.
[Daphne – No, Frank, yours is the propaganda that has been put about. It is not the Nationalist Party that made Patrick Holland requisition people’s property to give to friends and family. And it was not the Nationalist Party that turned Lorry Sant into a corrupt monster. It was not the Nationalist Party who made the then commissioner of police the murderous thug that he was. I could go on. But I won’t.]
So rational thinking must conclude that the spiral of violence which engulfed Malta in the following years was instigated by those same Nationalists.
After all Labour had already won the long awaited prize of government and had no logical reason to welcome any sort of instability.
[Daphne – Frank, do stop it. You are doing yourself no favours here.]
Violence obviously only begets more violence resulting in the Mintoff government and its supporters responding in kind.
Don’t forget that the Conservative side of politics in Europe at that time had plenty of form in fermenting instability for Socialist governments through clandestine operations. Please read Operation Gladio http://www.buergerwelle.de/pdf/secret_warfare_and_natos_stay_behind_armies.htm
Not everything is black and white Daphne especially in Maltese politics!
So in your opinion, fellow Maltese who happened to have a different political viewpoint to yours were merely “simple-minded, violent folk and misunderstood the meaning of government and of democracy” Daphne, that is beyond arrogance, we are talking about fellow citizens here!
Please correct me if I’m wrong. During his first term in office after being elected in1971, Mintoff took over the Bical bank and the National Bank of Malta. Despite the uproar which followed from Nationalist voters, his government was returned with the largest majority in history at the next General Elections
Does that not indicate that his actions were supported by a big part of the electorate? Is it not proof that Mintoff was doing many things right for the vast majority?
You talk about the violence of Labour. What’s this I see? “Remember the bombs which terrorised so many people in those days when Labour was in power and which stopped on the very day the Nationalists won the 1987 General Election?”
“Do you remember the arms that were found at the PN Headquarters in Pieta”
No, these are not my words, these comments were not published in some Labour journal but in the highly respected Times of Malta.
So please stop trying to convince everyone that for all its rightful condemnation, violence was only used by Labour while Nationalists were merely the whiter than white victims.
As mentioned earlier it was only the Opposition at the time who could have possibly benefited from instigating such violence.
Did you have a look at the covert goings on of Operation Gladio during the 70’s and 80’s? Can you say with hand on heart that its tentacles could not have spread across the few miles to Malta? After all their activities took place all over Europe and its primary aim was to destabilise all Socialist Governments such as those led by Mintoff.
Not possible? Don’t be naive, If they were capable of kidnapping and murdering Aldo Moro they could have easily attempted to overthrow Malta’s government with the assistance of the opposition.
Did it actually happen? Neither of us know and the chances are that nobody ever will. Was it a possibility? Read about Operation Gladio and you will conclude that the surprise would have been if it was not!
Well, well. Having a 10 hour time difference between here and Malta is almost a blessing. It means that I can wake up from a good night’s sleep and read all the responses to my comments all in one hit.
I have no intention of answering people like Mike C, yourself and others on a point by point basis because frankly I neither have the time nor could I be bothered.
The following opinion must however be expressed. While a number of you have what must be genuine grievances for the way Dom Mintoff and his government ran the country during his era, there are just as many others who feel that those same actions were fully warranted.
[Daphne – Just as there were more people in Nazi Germany who thought that it was legitimate to round up Jews and kill them than there were people who thought it was wrong, Frank. Yours is the fundamental (a)moral fallacy that afflicts people who think as you do: that if enough people want something, then it is right. This applies to matters like EU membership – where there is no question of morality involved. It does not apply to state-sanctioned theft, violence, institutionalised corruption, and breaking the economy’s back, wilfully.]
Facts – as opposed to statistics do not lie. Remember that in virtually every single General Election held in the country from the 70’s until this very day, the electorate was always split very near to 50-50.
[Daphne – See my comment above. The real facts, besides, are otherwise: that Labour has lost six out of the last seven general elections, and even the single won the party won in 1996 was a decision undone with a large majority in 1998. And then there are the facts on GDP- always miserable when Labour is in government. No one can argue with GDP, Frank. It’s black on white. But this is the thing: the typical Labour voter does not even know what GDP is.]
That means that for every voter who was hurt by Mintoff, there was pretty much another who was more than happy with the way he governed the country. Alternatively, voters were just as evenly split about the shortcomings or otherwise of Nationalist governments during the years that they held office.
[Daphne – That’s where you wrong again, Frank. The Nationalist Party’s voter-base is now nothing like it was in 1987. The way Fenech Adami’s governments changed this country from a pit to a decent place to live (barring the people) drew great swathes of new ‘converts’, for want of a better word. My entire extended family is but one small example – traditionally always Stricklandjani and mildly hostile to the PN, now convinced on results. Like us there are many more. Then there is the post-EU generation of electors, almost all of whom voted en masse for the Nationalist Party two years ago. The Labour Party, on the other hand, does not attract ‘converts’ who are convinced. It attracts opportunists who sniff the wind and see which way it’s blowing, or who think they might get a better deal there, or who have an axe to grind. When the basis for support is not conviction but something else – spite, envy, axes, irritation – it’s tenuous and flees easily. Sant learned that in 1996.]
Yes, there are those who rightly or wrongly are convinced that the reason for this was the perceived uneducated ignorance of near enough to 50% of the voters. There is just as valid a viewpoint however which is that basic values do vary greatly in the minds of different people.
Some may place economic values above everything else, others give a higher priority to social values, moral, family, religious, environmental or many other alternative ones.
It does not mean that one is necessarily right and another is wrong but as Jerry correctly pointed out in his comment, the acceptance of all these values by everyone is absolutely essential if Malta is to have a mature democracy.
Masochism is partly responsible for the 50-50 split and the rest is due to ignorance. How could you be happy to live in the dark years preceding 1987? How could you be happy with the two years of Alfred Sant’s government? I honestly cannot fathom.
That’s because he didn’t have to live with two years of Alfred Sant’s government. He lives in Australia.
smart people vote pn? what is so smart about having such a donkey for a pm
very smart comment…..
You surprise me Daphne when you say that “a moral fallacy that afflicts people who think as you do: that if enough people want something, then it is right”
Is that not what elections are all about?
What is it you want then, a dictatorship?
The point that you seem unable to acknowledge is that the electorate in Malta has always been split virtually 50% on each side.
Yes, Labour has lost almost all of the elections since 1987, even you have to concede however that in nearly every one of them the difference in the number of votes was relatively small.
Nobody is claiming that Labour should have formed government because “if enough people want something” it is not necessarily right. The point is that almost as many electors in Malta wanted to see the back of Nationalist Governments in every election as having them re elected – for whatever reason.
Does that indicate to you that a Nationalist Government is as superior to Labour as you and your kind believe it be? It is not only Labour who “attracts opportunists who sniff the wind and see which way it’s blowing, or who think they might get a better deal there, or who have an axe to grind”
Believe me Daphne, there are just as many Nationalists who do precisely the same and have always done so. It’s little wonder that the Nationalist Party is renowned for being the party of “Opportunisti”. I know because cousins on both sides of my parents were exactly that and had no qualms in admitting that it’s the way politics works in Malta.
But then I cannot expect people like yourself to concede such things, despite your undoubted intelligence you have been blinded by your hatred for anything Labour since childhood.
[Daphne – Nothing blinds me, Frank. On the contrary, I have built an entire career as a newspaper columnist on being perceptive about political situations.]
Just one further point that I forgot to mention Daphne. The political scenario in Australia is that around 40% of the electorate votes for one side no matter what while another 40% does the same for the other.
Elections are therefore decided by the 20% who vote on the issues of the day.
It seems to me that Malta has had a similar scenario with the exception that the percentages are more like 49% on either side leaving just a handful of voters to decide the outcome.
Unfortunately, that is precisely what gives the island such an unhealthy democracy.
On this point you find me in agreement – the problem is that those few % are mostly after self interest, spite, axes to grind etc and do not take decisions based on the real benefit of the general society.
This comment was posted by a Mr Charles Buttigieg on a blog which appeared in The Times of Malta last year
“Before the end of 1986, our retirees with a prior annual income of €14,000 were getting €9320 plus cost of living increases as pension. Today if your annual income prior to retirement is €28,000 or even more a pensioner would not get a Euro more than the same €9320 plus cost of living increases that the Labour Government afforded them”
Can someone please confirm or deny this? If correct, this is a shameful indictment of succeeding Nationalist Governments! Despite the huge increases of Gross Domestic Product that Daphne continually boasts about, the retirees of Malta have been totally ignored in the fair sharing of this prosperity.
[Daphne – Perhaps you should ask Charles Buttigieg how and when he got his job at Air Malta, and exactly what he gave the taxpayer in return for all those years of leeching a salary.]
I don’t really care how Mr Buttigieg got his job Daphne because It has nothing whatsoever to do with my reasonable question. I do see however that he is another person that you know quite a bit about. Do you have files on everyone on the island by some chance?
[Daphne – No files are necessary, Frank. And yes, it is a relevant point. Here we have Charles Buttigieg whining about his pension when for the last 40 years or so he has done sweet FA to contribute in a productive way to the pension fund.]
I really hope that some factual light can now be shed on the pensions matter.
Is it possible for the simple question to be answered PLEASE? Is it that difficult?
Frank,
I suppose you can choose to ignore me again and I’ll understand, being on the wrong side of the facts and basing yourself on propaganda and hearsay puts you at a disadvantage in a debate.
But make no mistake, to those of us who grew up under Mintoff, you sound like a holocaust denier, albeit on a small scale.
You asked about pensions. Well, the pensions issue is a complex one and anyone following the international politics of the last 20 years should know it. Please don’t be disingenuous. Again, a wider appreciation of historic fact is also important.
Countries across the world have faced (or neglected to face) this issue and the needed reforms in pensions which became unsustainable as populations aged.
Labour’s position has been that there is no need for reform, without telling us where the money should come from, as with most of its “proposals” over the years, and that doing nothing was the best remedy for a shrinking pool of contributors and a rising pool of pensioners. It has been evident for years that a switch to a system where you pay for your own pension rather than for that of those who are pensioners whilst you are still in the working world is necessary.
Faced with a party in opposition who collaborates on national issues ONLY if there is nothing to be gained by NOT collaborating, the PN has had to basically go it alone, adding to the delay this necessary reform has taken. (It was first raised in the early 90’s, I believe.) Labour’s 1996-1998 disaster has also contributed to this delay.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that the PN is perfect, and it DOES do things slowly, but the fact is that it generally does what needs to be done in the way it needs to be done or the closest viable alternative, unlike Labour who’s only policy is to do whatever needs to be done to win elections. “And then we’ll see”.
Back to the pensions, in truth AS did suggest that fuller participation of women in the working world would contribute to a solution, a notion I don’t altogether disagree with, but then also used the other side of his mouth to tell us that we should be ashamed that women ‘have’ to work and that men should be able to support a family on their own.
Hardly a credible interlocutor.
The PN has come up with a reform to address the issue Mr. Buttigieg raises, phased in over time. There are ample studies and white papers available on the internet if you want to look them up. I’m not sure which phases kick in and when, although I do know that I will retire at 65 instead of 61, which I am obviously not happy about. But better than no pension at all.
Mr. Buttigieg is not just a disinterested bystander, as a cursory glance at the Times comment pages should tell you. He has therefore chosen his figures purposefully.
Quite apart from the figures themselves, essentially the scheme is that you get a pension of two thirds of your salary, capped at Lm6000 or EUR14000, a sum very few people earned in 1986. The salary calculation is/was based on your last 10 years of work, which on the one hand encouraged tax evasion and undeclared payments, (except in the last couple of your working years) but at the same time penalised those whose salaries declined as they got older. Both these issues have been addressed in the new system. And by the way, it is the PN which a few years ago changed the system so that pensioners also got two thirds of the cost of living increase (NOT Labour) given to employees and later the FULL amount. It is also the PN which institutionalised a mechanism for calculating the increase in a scientific manner indexed to inflation. In addition, the Labour government of the 80’s did not give out any increases, cost of living or otherwise. A wage freeze was instituted in 82 or thereabouts and remained in force until we were shot of Labour in 1987.
Mr. Buttigieg, clearly writing in bad faith, chooses to use the EUR14000 figure as a random example, perhaps neglecting to mention that is was the system’s cap and very far from the average salary, which was closer to EUR4500. Even assuming that the average pensioner was retiring with a comparable average salary, his pension would therefore be EUR3000 at the most, far less than the EUR9320 he mentions, a figure which very few people would have been in a position to receive. In 1986 he would also have been paying at least 5% tax on that figure. Unlike today, there was no such thing as a 0% tax band.
What Mr. Buttiegieg fails to mention is that the cap was fixed by a Labour government who did not see fit to change it when in government in 1996/98.
He also fails to mention that when setting the system up, other systems were outlawed and wound up. My father paid for two other pensions but had he lived to retirement age he would have lost both of them anyway.
What is also not mentioned is that even the pensions at the levels quoted needed to be paid for. If Labour had managed to steal just one more election (and believe me, they tried – I suggest you look up the map of the electoral districts of 1981) even the pensions at that level would have become unsustainable.
With an economy in the state it was, with the unemployment there was, the vast numbers of people employed with the government on minimum wage (trying to steal the election…) and elsewhere, as well as a tax system where if you earned LM4500 a 65% tax rate kicked in, there was no way the government was going to be in a state to pay any pensions at all within a very short space of time.
Many thanks for your response Mike, I appreciate your efforts.
Let me assure you that I did not actually choose to ignore you earlier in this discussion. The truth is that many of the points you made were very similar in content to the ones put forward by Daphne and others.
Rather than repeat myself in putting forward alternative arguments individually, I felt it better to respond to you through the comments I made to Daphne.
You can rest assured Mike that my interest in Maltese politics have been peripheral to say the least even though I’m a keen student of Australian politics and have always held socialist leanings.
No Mike, even though I may sound like one, I am not a holocaust denier but do admit to believing that it has been exaggerated and highly politicized in order to win world sympathy for the Jewish state.
The only reason that I got involved in these discussions is because a relative who is out here on holidays introduced me to Daphne’s blog recently and was struck by the number of people from both sides of the political divide who’s minds are still shut tight to any faults in one party or give any credit for anything to their opponents.
Corruption is forever talked about forgetting the fact that it existed in Malta prior to Mintoff coming to power, during his years in government and ever since right up to this very day.
Governments of all shades, in every country including the worlds most powerful one are immersed in it.
Sadly, while I have always regarded Italy as long having had the most corrupt system of Government it appears that Malta could be even worse, possibly due to its size and the familiarity of most people to one another.
I well remember my fathers brother in law from Gozo who has now passed away and who happened to be a staunch “Nazzjonalist” freely admitting that he built up his wealth through Government corruption ever since the end of the war. There have obviously been Labour people who would have done the same over the years so please, let’s not be hypocrites and only remember corruption from only one side of the coin.
The same applies to violence. Nobody can deny that violence existed during the Labour years, only a close minded fool would but again, to overlook or deny the fact that violence, usually covert, was not committed by Nationalists who are invariably painted as innocent victims by their supporters, would be just as hypocritical.
To argue that one party was more corrupt or violent than the other is totally pointless because it is only a matter of degree and quite subjective. It all depends on which side of the fence you happen to be upon.
While venom and hatred is undoubtedly still carried by too many people from both sides I would like to think that rather than it being a trait of the Maltese character, it is more a lack of political maturity.
As expressed in an earlier opinion, I really do wonder if Malta was mature enough for political independence all those years ago!
When it comes to pensions – which was the point of your comment before I went off subject, the whole world is grappling with this complex issue.
I do not pretend to have an answer to it Mike, all I want to see is a fair and just method of looking after people who had gone through so much hardship in order to create the current prosperity, whether in Malta or anywhere else.
Once again many thanks for your detailed explanation of the current Maltese pension system even though it does not affect me in any way. Unfortunately, complex is not a good enough word to define it.
I’m sorry Frank, but I absolutely cannot accept your attempts at trying to place the PN and the MLP on the same footing when it comes to violence and human rights abuse. There just is no comparison. If it is a question of degree, then so is the quantity of sunlight visible during night and day. It is also highly offensive to all those beaten and tortured.
With respect to corruption, I don’t doubt that there will always be some corruption somewhere at some point, irrespective of the party in government, but it is the MLP who institutionalised the backhander as the necessary accessory to getting ANYTHING done when dealing with a government office, from getting a phone line to not having ‘problems’ with your parcel at the post office. The deprivation generated by the MLP’s economic mismanagement was a perfect incubator for this.
Finally, with respect to your comment abut whether or not we should have had independence, that’s a whole other discussion (although for Mintoff it was just a question of personal ego) but I’ll tell you this:
My father was very reluctant to vote yes in the independence referendum, not because he didn’t want it, but because he was afraid that Mintoff would try to set up a dictatorship. He eventually voted yes, his reasoning being that the British might give us independence anyway and better ask for it than make fools of ourselves and have it thrust upon us against our will.
But he was right about Mintoff.
And here’s some further reading:
http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2008/10/27/mintoff-the-electoral-facts-speak-for-themselves/
Mike,
Without covering old ground again and continue going round in circles, perhaps the best thing that I can do is point out the following comments taken from the link that you attached.
It’s quite interesting including the many comments but I must say that most of them lacked any semblance of objectivity which has been my main bone of contention with this blog all along.
There is however a contributor who goes by the name of Uncle Fester whose comments I found to be surprisingly refreshing. While he is certainly no fan of Dom Mintoff, he does seem to have the ability to analyse the matter in a very sensible way.
@Daphne. There you go again unaware that you are totally blinkered and unable to see Dom Mintoff objectively. You need to try and see him from the perspective of the people he represented – the poor, the working class, the marginalized and disenfranchised.
If you are able to do that you will come to a more objective understanding of him. Understanding him does not necessarily mean admiring him or even liking him. It means just that – understanding where he’s coming from.
Antoine and your interesting psychobabble is just part of the picture. Remember Mintoff could have stayed in England if he wanted to after he graduated from Oxford. He didn’t. Keep in mind that he wanted integration with the U.K. to allow the Maltese to enjoy the better economic conditions of the U.K.at the time.
The PN at one point advocated the Italianita of Malta which was an attempt at integration with Italy. At the time of integration, Mintoff was also trying to appeal to Constitutionalist Party voters who were die-hard pro-British – his meetings with the Union Jack behind him should be seen in this context as well.
@Daphne. I understand what you went through and my heart goes out to you and others who suffered under the worst of Mintoff’s excesses, I lived through those times as well – 20 punt and all the rest of it.
Do you think that EFA would have come along with his center left policies without the existence of Mintoff? EFA was able to shift the PN leftwards and appeal to the center left of the political spectrum because of Mintoff.
Prior to EFA, the PN’s social policy was ridiculous, in fact if my memory serves me right Mario Felice helped sink the PN’s re-election efforts in 1976 by saying that he would abolish income tax. Without income tax there would be no free education, health, social services etc.
Just as Mintoff helped the PN by allowing someone like EFA from the center left of the party to take over as leader, EFA in turn caused the MLP to shift away from the extreme left to the center. Without EFA there would have been no New Labour and Alfred Sant who cleaned up the party and made it electable again.
By the way, Daphne made a comment about the similarities between Mintoff and Eva Peron.
[Daphne – Oh, please. His motivation was no different to Eva Peron’s: hatred, envy and the desire for personal advancement, dressed up as the saintly wish to help the poor.
The only differences are that one was a woman who spent the money she used her power and position to acquire, and nobody is ever going to write a musical about Mintoff.]
For all her critics, Peron is still remembered with absolute awe in her native Argentina which rightly or wrongly I expect Mintoff to be remembered by history in a similar way.
There are also some, and I mean only some, similarities with Vietnam. The country suffered wars, including civil, for decades before Ho Chi Minh finally succeeded in laying the foundation for the Vietnam which exists today.
For all the divisiveness, hardship, perceived lack of speech and freedom etc. the time was right after the war in Malta for someone like Mintoff to come along and raise the bar in the struggle for more equality in the country.
Frank,
He is refreshing to YOU, because he shares your point of view. To the rest of us, his rewrite of historic fact is as offensive as yours, factually incorrect, and has been amply debunked in this article, that one, and many others.
Thank you for a highly interesting discussion Mike, I enjoyed it.
Continuing with it seems pointless however because we are now only going round in circles.
Very best wishes to you and your family
.
Hi Frank,
You’re up early! You’re quite right, I don’t think you or I can say much more the the Mintoff subject to sway the other.
But I will leave you with a recommendation for some further reading, being John Manduca’s “A flavour of the Mintoff Era”. It is a collection of British foreign office papers dealing with the negotiations for the base agreement and secret annual reports by the high commissioners of the time to the foreign office.
Amongst the myriad negative comments about his authoritharianism from various commissioners, one high comissioner comments that he doubts whether Mintoff will bother to hold an election.
That says a lot and puts him in the company of leaders no democratic leader would wish to be. But we forget who Mintoff’s friends were/are. Gaddafi, Ceacescu, Kim il Sung, Mugabe…
Charles Buttigieg was either mistaken or deliberately misleading.
The relevant law can be accessed here: http://docs.justice.gov.mt/lom/Legislation/English/Leg/vol_7/chapt318.pdf
The calculation of the pension is quite complicated as in addition to earnings, type of employment (employed or self-employed), number of contributions there is also the age of birth.
But overall one is entitled to 2/3 pension with a capped limit of anything between €16,207.78 and €20,964.36 (but to these amounts one has to add the COLA since 2007). The capping is related to the fact that NI contributions (normally 10% of earning) are capped (€ 32.91 per week by both employee and employer).
So if one is earning €14,000 in 1986 – the earning was 9300 but if one is earning €28,000, that person could earn a maximum of €18666 (double the 1986 amounts).
Thanks for your answer Chris. As you say, the matter is extremely complex. I must admit to struggling in order to understand it however I take your word for it.
While I am not in any way personally affected, the comment by Mr Buttigieg got me curious.
Many thanks once again…Frank
Yes – quite complicated – most of us will know how much we’ll be getting as a pension only when we apply for it. But that is Malta.
What surprises me is that there are a number of persons with a seemingly low IQ who really know all the subtle details of the social security regulations and take full advantage of these hidden and difficult-to-know regulations.
Maybe they have extremely good accountants, Chris?