Karmenu Vella wants proof that the human rights abuses of the 1970s and 1980s actually happened
It's 1972, and there's Karmenu Vella, as always sandwiched with AST, on a visit to China with Glorious Leader Dom Mintoff
Karmenu Vella, interviewed by Malta Today on 7 November:
On a final note, Karmenu Vella is himself often described as Labour’s more appealing, business-friendly face: its version of ‘Mr Nice Guy’.
This certainly comes across in his immediate dealings with people, as he is unthreatening almost to the point of appearing meek. But he is nonetheless one of the sole survivors of the Mintoff and Karmenu Bonnici administrations of the early to mid-1980s: administrations which were associated with various human rights abuses.
Doesn’t he think his own presence in Muscat’s shadow cabinet may act as a deterrent to Nationalist voters shifting to Labour? And what is his own assessment of those distant Labour governments, and his role therein?
He rolls his eyes and almost audibly groans, as if to say: ‘Oh, not again…’
“Look: first of all I absolutely disagree with what you just said, and if these things took place at all I dissociate myself completely from them. But Labour was in government more recently than just the 1970s and 1980s – I was tourism minister in 1997, and I’d like to think I acted in the most upright and transparent manner possible.
“Most Nationalists will acknowledge this, if you ask them. I do however agree with you that Nationalists are switching to Labour these days, for various reasons. There are those who are fed up of the government’s arrogance; who feel that their businesses are going to the dogs; who feel this government promised a lot, but didn’t deliver… and there are also some who see in Joseph Muscat a leader who is capable of putting together a compact team that is offering a more prudent and responsible governance.
“If you know of any Nationalists who want to be part of Labour, but are keeping away because they’re afraid of me, I’d appreciate it if you let me know about them. Maybe we can meet up and have a chat…”
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Exactly who does he think he’s fooling? He may have rewritten history in his own mind, he might describe those interminable years as the Golden Age, but the printed evidence is there, in the newspapers, even for those who might, at 61, be suffering from dementia already.
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Dementia can set in at any age.
Imagine him as a Labour Minister, conveniently ‘forgetting’ to land his boat in the right port – again.
Add one more to the list of ‘hindsight’ or ‘oversight’ experts within the Labour Party.
“…and if these things took place at all…”
Let him not take it from me. I dare Karmenu Vella to look, not at newspapers, which could very well be biased, but from the court records of all the human rights cases which had been instituted at the time and after 1987 due to blatant human rights violations. Those are unbiased and objective and I can assure this erstwhile gentleman that the people who were beaten, who lost their jobs, who were killed and abused in God knows how many ways, can very well confirm that these “things” took place.
Come on Karmenu, a man of your experience of life should know better than try to hide the bloody well obvious.
The PN club in his hometown was ransacked and torched as the crowd, his constituents, cheered.
Neighbouring property was extensively damaged with the people inside having to evacuate their terrified children via rooftops.
The hail of stones and glass bottles made it impossible to exit through the front door.
They were in a frenzy, and Karmenu was, is, why they did it.
It didn’t happen by itself, his dissociation alone gives them a legitimate motive to repeat what they did, should politics become excessive. It’s their burden.