Thirteen years, not 25
Is he going to make a better prime minister than Lawrence Gonzi? That's the only question you should be asking yourself.
I am really tired and fed-up of hearing people (even those who should know better) repeat like unthinking parrots the Labour-generated falsehood that the Nationalist Party has been in power for 25 years.
It hasn’t. It has been in power for exactly 13 years, since autumn 1998. Before that, it was voted out after just nine and a half years in power, between 1987 and 1996.
The fact remains that a Labour government was elected in the interim. That it collapsed is irrelevant. You still cannot count continuously from 1987 to 2011 (which makes 24 and not 25 in any case).
If we are going to adopt this idiotic approach of ignoring governments which are inconvenient for our purposes, then where shall we draw the line? Can we ignore two years, but not, say, five?
I am quite capable of exercises in wishful thinking, too. I can sit here and tell myself that the Nationalist Party has been in power continuously since the early 1960s, and that the years 1971 to 1987 never happened. I can blank them out and turn myself into a silly Pollyanna who looks forward to having Karmenu Vella as finance minister.
But they did happen. And so did the Labour government of the late 1990s. I find it astonishing that even ‘thinking persons’, encouraged by vojti like Marisa Micallef and her Labour Party, start counting in 1987 rather than 1998. It is not as though you can ignore the Labour government of 1996 to 1998 when it damaged the country so badly, taking us away from Europe, slashing economic growth and causing chaos.
This is bad for democracy, people say, having one political party in power ‘for so long’. Oh really? Thirteen years is too much, and we should give Silvio Parnis a shot at the wheel ghax ilu jistenna miskin?
What sort of cruddy reasoning is this?
In the world’s first and greatest parliamentary democracy, the one on which ours (though you wouldn’t think it) is modelled, the Conservatives were in power between 1979 and 1997, with a change only of prime minister in 1991 when Margaret Thatcher was forced to give way to John Major.
That’s 18 years.
This was immediately followed by 13 years of Labour, between 1997 and 2010, again with a change only of prime minister when Tony Blair gave way to Gordon Brown.
And still the Conservatives didn’t surge into power: they limped in, as we know, and have to share the government with the Liberals.
Similar situations happen in the United States, and for more or less the same reason. Where there are just two or at most three parties with the potential to form a government, choosing that government becomes a relatively simple matter of working out which one is most fit to run the country. All other considerations are set aside.
Malta is beset by its own particular problems in that one party is clearly unfit to run the country and has been so since the 1950s. This is not my personal opinion but an objective assessment based on the facts.
Yet Malta also had a mass of people who were illiterate and uneducated and hence unable to work out the issues. This brought us the catastrophe of 1971 to 1987, in which these large masses were manipulated by the Socialists who could read and write and who set themselves out as intellectuals and renegades in the war against the ‘puliti’.
The situation continues to this day, with half the population blinded by a mixture of semi-literacy, prejudice, band-club-type loyalty and family tradition into thinking that Labour is best fit to run Malta. They ignore or misinterpret the evidence to the contrary, or they see it and choose to vote Labour anyway.
Choosing a government in Malta is an emotional and not rational choice, and it is THIS and not the 13 years which the Nationalist Party have spent in government which weakens our democracy.
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The Socialists are so ashamed to talk of the past and with very good reason.
Even their past leaders like Mintoff, KMB and Sant are hardly ever mentioned.
On the contrary, they do their best to make people forget them. And can you blame them for burying the disastrous short term that Sant spent attempting to come to terms with governing this country?
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20111211/interview/-We-could-manage-the-economy-better-.397717
The Labour Party came up with 51 proposals in response to the Budget. Were you involved in drawing them up?
“No. I was involved in certain evaluation of the economic situation as outlined in the minister’s speech. I submitted my evaluation and it was up to the Leader of the Opposition to digest, cut and paste.”
Is that what drew you to the Labour Party?
“I’ve always sided with the underdog….”
Two questions: Is the Labour Party a Cut and Paste Party, and, if Scicluna always sided with the underdog, where was he in the Eighties?
Italy has Cashmere Communists, France has Champagne Socialists. And we’re stuck with this lot.
Point taken. My God that was a bashing.
For those who think that 1996-1998 Labour government was just a ‘blip’, I would put them in our shoes who experienced that period. These were the labour Party electoral promises:
VAT will be removed in six months time(?)
Mater Dei Hospital was to be demolished “stone by stone”
Marin Hili the Baruni will be exiled
Malta will stop being a Partnership for Peace member.
Malta will stop its application for membership in the EU.
These ‘decissions’ were taken not without consiquences:
Removal of VAT and the introduction of CET. Lino Spiteri resigned from finance minister.
The doubling of the beds in MDH and turning it from a specialised hospital like San Raffaele into a general hospital to replace Saint Luke’s. Perhaps that’s why he dubbed it as “a state of the art hospital” later.
Marin Hili continued running his business and the Malta Freeport.
Malta resigned from PfP membership by Labour and re-entered with the approval of Labour after making certain that Gaddafi was dead. So much for Maltese soldiers in body bags !
Alfred Sant froze our application for membership in the EU.
All these kept promises were taken within six months. From then onwards everyone enjoyed long hours by the beach eating “hobz biz-zejt” because there was nothing to do (No new jobs and no overtime, the economy was jammed). Then came Leo Brincat with the second budget with its ‘poll tax’ and phenomenally high“taken as read” utility bills when there was no financial crisis around us and oil prices were around the $30 a barrel mark.
Gorg Abela resigned from his consultancy job at Castille. Then came Mintoff’s enjoyable diatribes in parliament against the high utility bills. After that Dr Alfred Sant got fed up and painted himself in a corner: a vote against the Cottonera project is a vote of no confidence in the Alfred Sant Government, Mintoff voted against the Cottonera Project ….and Alfred kept his word and resigned.
That’s the damage the Labour Party could inflict on Malta in this little blip everyone is forgetting and which only lasted for twenty two long months .
You pump a tyre with your hand pump in ten minutes and I will burst it flat with a nail in a second.
replace:the “I” with “Labour” in the last sentence and you get a better picture.
Since 1976, the Labour Party has not won an election and lasted the full five-year term.
The next election is a do or die for Labour.
This Nationalist administration needs another term in office to equal and surpass the 16 years of MLP administration between 71 and 87……..
I remember those PN promo shirts: 20 years in govt, 5 more? DEAL—No comment
May I suggest uploading this particular blog post every few weeks from now until election day?
Amongst other things, a good democracy needs good journalism and yours is the best.
We are already handicapped enough with having an unfit opposition; this country needs all the help it can get from quality writing to help people make informed choices.
Excellent. I enjoyed reading this Daphne. The Labour Party’s current political strategies seem to be based on (not neccessarily in any kind of order:
a) Ignoring, almost completely, the debacle that was the Labour Government; 1996-1998 – also demonstrated by the future Minister for Southern Affairs in your earlier piece.
b) Projecting its own dreadful, not so distant past onto the Nationalist Party. Highlighted all over the PL media, including on Jurassic Joe Grima’s weekly program.
C) The election-winning promise to reduce the nation’s electricity bills, no matter WHAT. Now that SargaSSSS seem to drifting off into the Labour sunset, I wonder what contingency plan Joseph has in place tom come good on that one?
A few years ago, Marie Benoit wrote that Marisa Micallef is only good at affixing stamps to the PN mail in the basement of the PN headquarters (Stamperija at the time).
Labour continues to look at quantity, not quality. It is not how much time they’ve spent in opposition that counts for them to come back to government.
It is the quality of the alternative government that they propose that matters. And there, its like we are still in 1987. Just look at their frontmen: Joe Grima, Alex Sceberras Trigona, Karmenu Vella, Joe Debono Grech …and a Leader who adores Dom Mintoff.
You wrote: “This is bad for democracy, people say, having one political party in power ‘for so long’. Oh really? Thirteen years is too much, and we should give Silvio Parnis a shot at the wheel ghax ilu jistenna miskin? What sort of cruddy reasoning is this?”
That is the crux of the argument. IF labour win the next election – and that’s a big if, i’ve yet to be convinced that labour will pull this one – it will be precisely because of this reasoning. Turn-taking taken to its most absurd, if you ask me.
It is not a question of having a political party in power for almost 25 years, it’s a question of having a political party which resorts to all kind of anti-democratic practises to STEAL elections !
[Daphne – The Nationalist Party has not been in government for 25 years. It has been in government for 13 years.]
Of the last 5 elections won by the PN only ONE – 1992 – was won on the PN government’s merits. 1987 was won by the Raymond Caruana killing, the P.P.Busuttil frame-up ( the protagonist of which was later PROMOTED to Asst.Commissioner of Police !) and the Tal-Barrani episode. The 1998 election was given to the PN by Dom MIntoff. The 2003 was given to the PN by the procession of EU Presidents, Commissioners,, and the LM 100 million a year hoax. And the 2008 was stolen in the last few weeks by thousands of promises to everybody, and the tears shed by JPO in a made-up scene set up by Joe Saliba !
[Daphne – I won’t bother answering this crazed rubbish. Ever since my childhood I remember you arguing the merits of the Labour Party in letters to The Times. It is very difficult indeed to understand how, in 1987 and again in 1992, you voted Labour. You should have had your head examined, but now it’s obviously too late. How you could have possibly believed that Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici was a better prime minister than Eddie Fenech Adami – and you clearly believe it still – is beyond me to understand.; You are clearly not illiterate, so you have no excuse.]