Maltese servicemen were given the option of either leaving the services without penalty for rescinding their contract or complete/renew it and be transferred the British base in Cyprus.

The second ‘rundown’ which, if memory serves me well, was just 18 months before the 1971 general election and must have cost Borg Olivier that election because I remember the then MLP making a whole lot of political gain out of it with Mintoff screaming that many families will be losing the breadwinner.

Another fact that is being overlooked is that during Mintoff’s dealings with Britain for the base renewal, he recruited the help of Mons. Gonzi who made many trips to England pleading Malta’s case.

I remember that at first Mintoff doubled his request from 3.50m to 7m, then uped it to 14m (which was considered favourably) and then to 18m, which proved to be the final straw.

Well feyyyyuuuuhk me! A fellow traveller.

I can put your mind at rest on the last question: The European Union is defending us.

Really. I know you nation of goddamn lawyers will say that there is nothing in the hundreds of metres of shelf space of EU legislation which says anything about mutual defence pacts. But you may rest assured that if the territory of one member state were to be threatened, the other states would intervene.

Now for the bla bajd bit. Yes, PN is a party of comfortable cowards. It swept twenty years of evil, disastrous policies, corruption and crime (including murder) under the carpet in 1987. All in the name of peace. Issa kullhadd friends. Ejja naghmlu paci. Presumably because Christian-Democrat means turn-the-other-cheek. Mintoff should be rotting in jail right now, not pampered in state hospitals at the taxpayer’s expense. That statue to Lorry Sant should have been torn down the minute it was put up. Malta’s old pal tal-bajtar emblem should have been replaced on every plaque and monument to those terrible twenty years of third world experience. That hideous mound of rubble and prickly pears which glorifies a day which should not even be on the list of national holidays should have been bulldozed over.

So what if the Labour hordes would have come out with their torches and pitchforks? I thought PN came to power to restore the rule of law. So they would have been met by the long arm of the law – the very same law paraded about as a status symbol by our village politician lawyers. So what if KMB had gone on a xtrajh tal-guh in protest at Mintoff’s trial? The law would have found KMB guilty of complicity and put him in jail too, for a shorter spell.

That is PN’s tragedy. Transforming (sorry – “incentivising”) the economy is laudable. But it’s the obvious choice. Getting us into the EU was something between us and il-barrani. But justice and reparation – ah! that requires balls. Real ones. It requires purges. Perhaps purges of one’s own close chums. Because hey, while the rest of the country went through hell, some very important Nationalists were busy colluding with the enemy. As for our intellectual class, they’re too busy commenting on the minutiae of Triq Balzunetta and making sure their tenured professorship stays that way.

A nation of vile, conniving, lily-livered, fat-jowled, bead-clutching cowards.

If PN had balls we wouldn’t be where we are now, counting electoral majorities in spoonfuls and wagging our fingers at mountains of unused medication and an even larger mountain of tax fraud, with half the population revering that Mintoff-worshipping cynical manipulator Joseph Muscat.

Malta was already considered a base for Gaddafi’s military forces by the Italian secret service as early as 1975.

This wasn’t given the due importance until Aldo Moro’s kidnapping and execution by the BR, leading to a radical revision of Italy’s foreign policy.

Moro had been part of the negotiating process between Malta and Britain for the creation of the republic, something Borg Olivier opposed, leading to his isolation and Mintoff’s gaining favour.

When Malta became a base for Gaddafi’s operations, confirmed by the Saipem incident, Mintoff found himself at the mercy of a terrorist financing regime.

It explains the bipolar change of relations with Italy, and more specifically with the DC, Moro having been considered a friend, with one Malta’s main arteries named after him, whilst all his party colleagues considered spawns of the great satan.

To date no one questioned Sciberras Trigona what he meant by ‘providing refuge to political organisations like the BR and Baden Meinhof to use the transmitters in Delimara’. Whether these had access to the country, held bank accounts and managed weapons transhipments.

One shouldn’t forget the coincidence between the signing of Malta’s protocol with Italy, a protection pact with a member of Nato, removing us from Gaddafi’s clutches, and the Bologna train station attack resulting in scores dead.

Gaddafi also financed the IRA and the PLO, both organisations favoured by Yana Mintoff. Perhaps she would like to divulge some details.

Nothing keeps me from thinking that now that Gaddafi’s gone, Labour has turned to her for financing. Kif jghid il-Malti, jekk ma’ tghaddix mill-bieb, idhol mit-tieqa.

The crux here, is Labour’s terzomondisti forma mentis, if it holds on to these people, we’ll get more of the same. When Yana speaks, her reference to ‘iz-zghir’ is extended to the nation as a whole. I’m sure she’s good friends with Alex, who may have a hand in her appointment.

What’s remarkable is how senior Labour MP’s have turned rather quiet recently.

Worse still was the decision to keep it that way. Again, PN, the party of complacency.

Silly me. And there was I, thinking that it was great old British humour, having the Maltese report the celebrations on April Fool in 1979.

Daphne, is carmel for real or did you insert this?

[Daphne – He’s real.]

Facts:

1. Borg Olivier signed a 10-year defence agreement with Britain, which meant that British forces were obliged to defend Malta should it be attacked by third parties. The agreement was that in return for allowing British troops in Malta Britain was committed to Malta’s defence and also fork out Lm2 3/4 million per year.

2. On being elected in 1971 Mintoff immediately wanted to change the agreement and asked for Lm18M

3. The Brits would have nothing to do with that and they promptly started moving out. I vividly remember hearing Edward Heath on Rediffusion saying ‘ We will not give Malta a penny more.’

4. While the Brits were pulling out, NATO, and especially the Italians and the Yanks became very concerned with the possibility of having the Soviet Union push its ‘borders’ or let’s say ‘sphere or influence’ further north from Libya and right under its southernmost border, ie Italy. The latter had, at that time, the strongest communist party in the whole of Western Europe.

5. After a lot of negotiations and Mintoff’s begging, NATO, and I repeat NATO – not Britain, forked out the difference. And the difference was not between 2 3/4 million to 18 million (on which Mintoff was insisting) but the difference between 2 3/4 and Lm14million because that is what NATO was ready to offer. And that is what Mintoff had to accept.

6. But the worst was yet to come. Malta was defenceless from 1972 onwards because the Brits not only did not fork out any more money than agreed with Borg Olivier, but also released themselves from their obligation to defend Malta. And more…. the agreement Mintoff negotiated was really one that made the Maltese seem like ‘careless prostitutes’ because we gave our land away for a sum of money without even asking for protection by the same forces stationed here.

Enough said. Now if we fast-forward to the present day, I cannot agree more with the guy who wrote ‘PN bla bajd’. Bla bajd when it comes to our foreign policy yes, because we should not allow Malta to continue to be defenceless.

We can’t afford a proper defence force as a small island nation and so we should follow what most of the Baltic states are doing by joining NATO, which means that NATO will provide the necessary defence by having the other bigger and better-equipped nations to rotate their forces in defending these islands.

The same Baltic states that were part of the Soviet Union have not only joined the EU but NATO as well. Because it is sensible. Because it sends the right message to anyone with bad intent. And because we are true Europeans and trust other Europeans with our defence since we are unable to do it ourselves.

Defence is an insurance. It costs money but is necessary. Our PN politicians are failing us by playing a very dangerous game, because they are scared of what the opposition could say.

Things became starkly clear last year when Malta refused to help in the military build-up and execution of the mission to rid the world of Gaddafi. The world, not Libya, because Gaddafi was a plague on the world and a particular plague on Malta.

Malta even refused permission to non-NATO countries like the UAE and Qatar to use our resources. The government had cold feet from day one, and all this because the typical PN bla bajd was not sure of what the Opposition would say. Or rather, it knew what the Opposition would say and didn’t want to have to deal with it.

In the end, the war in Libya just showed how unimportant and irrelevant Malta is in today’s warfare because NATO and the other Arab states won the war without setting foot on Malta during their missions. Which begs the question: who is defending us?

Their sentimental motivation did not impress the hard-headed, pragmatic and practical civil servants and the politicians at the Colonial Office who were unwilling to fork out the cash demanded by Mintoff, when the facilities that Malta could offer were already available more cheaply and more trouble-free in near-by Sigonella.

NATO’s only remaining concern was that Malta should not be allowed to fall in the Warsaw Pact or terrorist states’ sphere of influence. That left the NATO countries open to Mintoff’s blackmail but he overplayed his hand and we all suffered the consequences of that error of judgment.