Joseph Muscat wipes out Alfred Sant and takes it right back to Mintoff
How does Joseph Muscat think he can get away with a screaming lie with bells on, like this? ‘The Labour Party hasn’t won the majority of votes since 1976’.
Oh, no? So what happened in 1996, then? If anyone knows, it’s him, because he was tacked to Alfred Sant’s coat-tails back then, cadging influence by stroking his master’s subsceptible ego.
The new myth: Labour hasn’t won an election since 1976. That must mean GonziPN is an oligarch, like Franco Debono said, and a dictator.
The other reason he’s lying like this is because he wants to portray himself as the successor to Dom Mintoff, not to KMB by way of Alfred Sant.
From Mintoff to Muscat, in a direct line of glory. And to complete the picture, he’s standing for election on a district with which he has absolutely no connection. The rural boy from Burmarrad is standing for election in the harbour district, Mintoff’s hometown and territory.
I have a sneaking feeling that, like his classmate Franco, he too is stuck in his childhood years, this time with the golden tales his nanna told him when she took him to meetings of is-Salvatur.
14 Comments Comment
He is standing for election on the second district to get a kick out of getting a record number of votes. It is a present he wants to give himself.
Daphne
When he said that Labour lost six out of seven elections, does that not mean that he did refer to 1996 victory? Most probably his intention was to stress the point that as a party they have a very bad record politically speaking.
It is welcoming to note that Labour’s Leader admits publicly that the majority was not behind them in 1981. Maybe he is just doing it to impress but as you may have noted the delegates did not really like it but he still said it.
It’s also a good thing that he acknowledges the good things done by Nationalist Governments – is this not a positive development for our country?
Hopefully more and more politicians adopt the same attitude because that would be very beneficial to our country unless we want fundamentalist politicians.
[Daphne – http://www.samueljohnson.com/dogwalk.html ]
Jake, we don’t need Joseph Muscat to tell us that the majority of voters wasn’t behind Labour in 1981. We can see it for ourselves by looking at the numbers.
Jake, his admission about 1981 is irrelevant. It’s widely known and accepted (admitted?) that the the majority of votes went to the PN in 1981, and that the PL held onto power due to its parliamentary majority – i.e. they held more seats than the PN.
Such was the voting system back then, but amendments were made after that to make sure that such a perversely undemoctatic situation cannot be repeated.
What the PL will never admit is the scandalous way in which they governed between 1981 and 1987, holding onto power well beyond the usual 5-year term.
What the PL also doesn’t admit is that the “perverse” result of 1981 was not a coincidence but the result of deliberate gerrymandering.
“GEORGE CUTAJAR
Today, 18:52
“Members of Parliament of the party in office should be extremely reluctant to vote against the government, or even to hold individual ministers to account, if that would embarrass it.”
“The team must not be weakened by some of its members making clear in public that they disapprove of the government’s policy.”
“If they do not like what the team is doing, they must either keep quiet or leave.”
Not my words.
Excerpts from Debono’s thesis with thanks to Nicky Azzopardi.” ( http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120118/local/house-reconvenes-debono-sits-on-last-seat.402871 )
I replied to George Cutajar’s comment on timesofmalta.com’s board, remarking that the subject of Debono’s infamous thesis should have been picked up by mainstream media such as that newspaper itself, instead of by a young blogger.
They didn’t upload my comment.
I can’t decide who’s got the bigger ego between Joseph Muscat and Franco Debono.
Joseph Muscat probably doesn’t see himself as the real-life uncouth Mintoff, with his stingy lifestyle and caprine manners. No, Joseph is an idealised Mintoff, a Salvatur with a jet-setting lifestyle.
Unfortunately, he cannot take on the British Empire but, hey, there’s always GonziPN.
Joseph Muscat and the Web of Evil. X’ċuċ hu Indiana Jones.
I think you have made a very good point here.
Muscat sees himself as the personification of the myth of Mintoff.
There are usually two concepts: the real person and the myth. Muscat identifies himself with the myth.
Just like Mafiosi copy the myths created by movies about the great wise guys of the Prohibition golden era.
Ranier Fsadni wrote about this phenomenon some time back, saying that real mobsters imitate movie characterisations of mobsters.
It is looking more and more that Joseph Muscat is nothing other than a stooge, put forward as an acceptable face of PL by the Mintoffiam old guard that is increasingly visible within PL structures.
It could be that he wants his supporters to forget the awful and pathetic way with which he harassed the greatest leader Malta has ever had – Dr Eddie Fenech Adami. Also because of the obsession he has with ‘his image’ probably he does not want to remind himself and his supporters that back then he was merely a ‘super one’ reporter.
Was ‘Lil Din’ the solitary applauder when he made that great admission about 1981?
I’m pretty sure nobody else clapped because they were still stunned, trying to work out what the hell just happened to their 1996 majority of 8000 votes!
I think his comment about not expecting anything as a right was a smart move. Franco should take that advice.
The speech in the clip is Labourspeak when the audience is their own.
What he tells the rest of us is something else. Remember his logic to the EU referendum result? ‘With hindsight, and given the election result, (barely a month later), partnership lost’.
According to Joseph it was democratic to ignore the referendum result as they had declared they would do so anyway.
We’ll get these contradictions on a daily basis.