Here's Mintoff kissing Gonzi's ring

Published: February 5, 2011 at 5:17pm

And Mintoff kneeling in worship at St John’s Co Cathedral with Mrs Mintoff making a rare public appearance, if my eyes do not deceive me, though not exactly at his side.

These are from Karmenu Vella’s Facebook photo albums dedicated to Dom, and beneath this particular photograph he has written:

Zmien Mintoff messu jinkiteb b’ittri tad-deheb.




49 Comments Comment

  1. Brian*14 says:

    Jinkiteb b’ittri tad-deheb halli kulhadd jiftakar kif hexa pajjiz u generazzjoni wara ohra. Il-perit Mintoff, Salvatur tal-Marmalja.

  2. Charles Darwin says:

    “Zmien Mintoff messu jinkiteb b’ittri tad-deheb.”

    Hekk hu, biex hadd ma jinsa iz-zmien ikrah li ghadda minnhu il-pajjiz.

    I would have made him kiss my #$$ not the ring…scumbag.

  3. Brian*14 says:

    ‘Zmien Mintoff messu jinkiteb b’ittri tad-deheb’

    Forsi biex nibqghu niftakru kif fired u kisser pajjiz, kemm zergha ghaks, hdura, tixwix, u vjolenza, u kif irnexxielu jevapora ‘l-pajjizna minn fuq il-mappa.

  4. TROY says:

    Ghad baqalek xi ritratt fejn int qied titbaxxa tbus lil xi hadd mindud fuq is-saqqu tal-pruwa fuq ‘STORMY’, Karm? Telghu fuq il-Facebook profile tieghek, jekk joghgbok.

  5. Bob says:

    Zmien Mintoff inkiteb, imma bid-demm…

  6. anthony says:

    It is Moira Mintoff. I am not sure Dom is kissing the ring but he is certainly bending a knee.

    What is more important is the look on His Grace Sir Michael Gomzi’s face. What a sly old fox.

    He never trusted Mintoff and never retreated one miilimetre from his position of Metropolitan Archbisop and archdiocese supremo in years of confrontation. He was an authoritarian.

    He was very well aware that Dom considered any attempt at compromise as a sign of weakness.

    Gonzi stood his ground until matters were taken away from him by the notorious and dreaded graduates of the Pontificia Accademia Ecclesiastica in Piazza della Minerva.

    Ask Oscar Romero.

  7. Reporter says:

    Is it protocol that the PM’s wife should sit by the Deputy PM? (Guze Ellul Mercer was Deputy PM, wasn’t he?)

  8. trevawaqeva says:

    Poor woman – is she still alive?

    [Daphne – No.]
    I was wondering if there are any reliable publications about Maltese political history which cover the run up to independence through to the eighties. I would appreciate any reading suggestions anyone may have.

    • H.P. Baxxter says:

      There are none. And how could there be, when the despots and thugs of those three decades are still alive, still in parliament, still in power, and will one day be in government, yet again?

      So we keep our silence on the living, because they’re in power, and very often they’re our bosom buddies, and we keep our silence on the dead because, er, they’re dead.

      We are a nation of of vile slinking cowards. Our “intellectuals” and “academics” are quite literally eunuchs: lacking balls, and busy vying for favours at the palace.

      • dudu says:

        @ H.P. Baxxter

        You seem the intelligent type but do you have the balls to criticise the ‘palace’ and use your real name?

      • H.P. Baxxter says:

        I did, on multiple occasions, and in writing. But I’m among the slime on the seabed in the grand scheme of Maltese power, so I never made the headlines, and my criticism counts for nothing. Besides I’m neither in acadaemia nor in government, and neither am I one of Gonzi’s blue-eyed boys. So I’m not on anyone’s radar.

        As for using my real name on this blog, I won’t. I haven’t the means to pay for a lawyer when I’m taken to court by our zealous upholders of criminal libel laws. And I still have to make my way in the world. I have more balls than Nike’s central depository, but I don’t want to jeopardise my employment opportunites even further.

    • Reporter says:

      Malta in the Making (Edgar Mizzi) perhaps?

    • Reader says:

      Look up Dr Henry Frendo, he’s an authority on the era.

      • H.P. Baxxter says:

        Yes, look up Dr Henry Frendo (Professor, please!), carefully walking the tightrope of neutrality on Mintoff. We need journalists and historians who can call a spade a spade, and faculty tenure be damned.

      • maryanne says:

        Dr. Henry Frendo specialises in neutrality and it doesn’t rate him as a good historian. (My personal opinion, of course.)

    • snoopy says:

      Adrianus Koster’s Prelates and politicians in Malta: changing power-balances between church and state in a Mediterranean island fortress, 1800-1976 – might give you an insight.

    • ciccio2011 says:

      If there had been any, they would have been burnt down by the marmalja.

  9. Hot Mama says:

    Kiss the feet of Popes provided their hands are tied – Napoleon.

  10. Hot Mama says:

    “Zmien Mintoff messu jinkiteb b’ittri tad-deheb.”

    That’s because it was never written with your blood and sweat, Karmenu Vella

  11. Bob says:

    Read Henry Frendo’s – Gorg Borg Olivier Biography by PIN

  12. ASP says:

    He knelt to pick up a farthing.

  13. Jo Camille says:

    Gonzi seems to be telling Mintoff something interesting.

  14. anthony says:

    Just for the record.

    Moira Mintoff was a scion of a British/Dutch aristocratic family.

    She was too humble to ever mention this fact but it shone through in her actions, attitudes, behaviour and way of life.

    She was a real lady.

    • Hot Mama says:

      She had a Lady Chatterley’s Lover moment, then, that lasted more than she might have cared to remember.

    • Ninu not Tony says:

      A truly wonderful lady, who did much charitable work, including finding time to look after an old and blind friend, a ‘Mrs Blackley’, as she was known, taking her out for drives, physically cleaning her house etc.

      Mrs Mintoff must have been a living saint to put up with that shitty hushband of hers.

      • Kukkudrill says:

        I don’t think she had any choice. She had no money of her own and he wasn’t about to give her any so that she could leave him.

        There was another important consideration: she was of a generation and background that considered divorce to be scandalous. Had she divorced him when he was already considered so controversial in Britain, that divorce would have been plastered across the front pages of every broadsheet and tabloid. I believe the shame of a public scandal is what stopped her.

        She did leave him once and went back home to England, but then came back.

        Yes, she was brave and decent, and had a quality that is so very lacking nowadays: backbone. I am quite sure her daughters are more proud of her than they are of their father.

    • Grezz says:

      I met her a couple of times in the course of my work some years ago. She was a really gentle woman, extremely soft-spoken and ever so polite. It always made me wonder why she would have married such a coarse, brash nobody.

    • red nose says:

      And she suffered silently living with her husband. She really suffered – I know.

  15. rigu says:

    I am surprised you haven’t picked on the way he holds his pen when he writes – like an 8 year old.

  16. Joe Cilia says:

    My dad used to say that Mintoff’s hatred grew even more when Gonzi was knighted but he, who fought so much for his (typical socialist bikkej) integration was completely ignored. Any thoughts on this? Cheers.

    • Kukkudrill says:

      The Queen should have knighted him. It would have undermined him completely in the eyes of the marmalja.

    • H.P. Baxxter says:

      In the final years of the British empire, knighthoods were being handed out like smarties.

      Gonzi’s knighthood was a political message from Westminster: we’d rather have him as the church’s head honcho in Malta than some rabid fascist Italophile.

      As it happened, he fought tooth and nail against integration for very much the same reason that people are fighting against divorce legislation today – misguided religious claptrap.

      Not that it would have made any difference. Integration was a typical Mintoffian “ask for the impossible, and then turn sour when you don’t get it” approach. We should have asked for dependency status, but, as DJs @ Work used to say back in the 90s, the past was yesterday:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvgfOkdwuEo

      Get that German rave sound!

  17. carmel says:

    Nahseb li min qieghed jikteb dawn ir-rimarki koroh fuq Mintoff ma jafx x’qed jghid. Duminku Min\toff kien, ghadu u jibqa s-salvatur ta’ Malta. Tafu xi tfisser li jkollok pajjis bazi tan-Nato u jirnexxilek tehles minnha, u wara jirnexxilek tmexxi il-pajjis il-quddiem biex jigi industrijalizzat u tkabbar it-turismu mix-xejn. Ara veru nies bla sens, possibli li Mintoff qatt m’ghamel xejn tajjeb ghal Malta.

    • Kukkudrill says:

      Aghmlu f’bozza u zommu ghalik, Carm.

      • Suldat ta’ l-azzar Guzeppin says:

        Dak ghad nibnulu l-ikbar monument f’Malta. Dak il-kaxxa ta’ Malta dejjem zammha mimlijja, u fejn ma kienx hemm xoghol jew nies ma’ jridux jahdmu, holqilhom ix-xoghol: Il-Pijunieri , Diraghjn il-Maltin, tad-Dejma, Bahhar u Sewwi, Tal-Hgieg, tat-Tapiti, tac-Cikkulata, l-Air Malta, il-Malta Shipbuilding, l-Ispinning and Weaving, Izra u Rabbi, Metalfond u ohrajn. Ma’ Mintoff, min kien irid jahdem kien isib jahdem.

      • Grezz says:

        Insejt l-“Ixtri Malti”?

      • colonna mediterranea says:

        Suldat tal-Azzar, jien kont nahseb li dak il-Monument ta’ Hal-Luqa bnewh ghalih.

    • ciccio2011 says:

      Carmel, Duminku m’ ghadux Salvatur. Issa Joseph Muscat huwa s-Salvatur u Duminku huwa t-Traditur.

    • La Redoute says:

      Whatever Mintoff achieved could have been brought about without the chaos, menace and insecurity on which he built his own myth.

      He had no respect for private property, except his own; no regard for the rule of law, unless it served his own ends; and, worst of all, no real plan or lofty ambition for il-popolin other than half-baked utilitarian ideas about education as a means of grinding everyone down to the same level.

  18. Etil says:

    It would be a good idea should someone tell Karmenu Vella that his ‘Saviour’ never thought of having a successor – he left his ‘beloved’ party orphaned – so to speak. So much for his love for the Labour Party.

  19. red nose says:

    Carmel – il veru cucati qed tghid. Il-poplu kollu jaf min xiex ghadda taht il HAKMA krudili u mishuta ta Mintoff – issa Salvatur? Saqsi lil Sant. Joseph taghakhom jaqbillu jindiehes ma’ dawk li kienu madwar Mintoff, ghax b;hekk biss jista forsi jirbah elezzjoni.

  20. Jean Gove' says:

    Nimmaġina li tafu li Mintoff u Gonzi kienu ħbieb sew fi żmien, u li Sir Michael Gonzi innifsu kien wieħed mill-fundaturi tal-Partit Laburista (Chamber of Labour) u kien Senatur Laburista għal żmien fl-1921.

  21. TROY says:

    dudu asking Baxxter to use his real name – how ironic.
    Baxxter, stick to your guns, mate.

  22. joe borg says:

    I think that’s not Moira but Agatha Barbara.

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