Here’s another one about Dom Mintoff, champion of the workers
Published:
April 4, 2012 at 6:05pm
Posted by Spiru just now:
A friend of mine, a former policeman, recounts how standing guard outside is-Salvatur’s villa in the dark nights of cold February he used to sit in his car. When is-Salvatur tal-haddiema realized this, he called the Police Commissioner, who charged this policeman.
From then onwards, when is-Salvatur was late at work, his driver had a tacit agreement with the policemen on shifts of duty: he’d dip his lights as he came down the street, to warn them, so they’d come out of their cars and stand to attention as il-perit emerged and ran into his house.
14 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
One more fact about Mintoff’s paranoid treatment of the poor policemen asigned to protect him.
When the British forces were packing up to leave after the UK government refused Mintoff’s demand for a higher rent, he developed a phobia that an attempt could be made to blow up Castille, Guy Fawkes’ style, using the abandoned tunnels under Valletta, therefore a continuous police guard was stationed in the Ditch.
On a cold and rainy night the policeman on duty who was sheltering from the rain was mystified to recognise Mintoff & Co searching the area. When the poor fellow could not contain his curiosity any longer he left his hiding place, approached Mintoff and asked him respectfully if he needed anything.
He got the scolding of his life for sheltering from the rain and was peremptorily ordered by Mintoff to go to the Police HQ there and then and to inform the Commissioner of Police that Mintoff had just dismissed him on the spot.
P.S. Better counsel later prevailed and the constable did not actually lose his job.
Prime Minister Mintoff once invited some foreign dignitary to his villa in Tarxien. As he was about to greet him, there was a flash of light from a flat in Santa Lucija opposite.
His police bodyguards and North Korean-trained SAG rushed over to check it out. A very well-known Labour supporter was apprehended, and after much shouting and manhandling he told the police that he was only changing a broken bathroom windowpane which had caught the sunlight.
I heard this directly from one of the policemen there.
It was not the SAG but the notorious SMU – Special Mobile Unit – I still feel shivers down my spine – had a special meeting with them on the 5th April 1987, at Rabat.
Snoopy, you are right; it was the SMU.
Dak kien jibza ghax jaf li kien jaghmel hafna hsara lil bosta nies ghax kien bniedem kiefer liema bhalu. Minnhabba il-kifrijha u l-vendikazzjonijiet tieghu anke nies il-qabar marru, biex ma nsemmux dawk li kellhom jemigraw mill-pajjiz.
Jghidu li kien ihobb lil haddiem, izda kull ma’ ghamel ivvinta il-pijunieri u korpi ohra li kienu jaqghu taht dixxiplina Militari biex ma’ jkunux jistghu jitkellmu jew jidhlu fil-Union.
Kien anke jmur go l-ghases tal-Pulizija wara l-parlament fejn kien ikun jaf li hemm certu Pulizija xoghol u jara kif se jtelfilhom hobzhom.
Dak ghidlu lil Fr. Mark Montebello.
All these anecdotes point to, among other things, Mintoff’s low self-esteem which forced him to continuously seek confirmation of his importance.
He wasn’t a happy man, was he?
The version that reached me at the time was about a flashing light from a rooftop nearby, interpreted as someone sending a message by Morse. When the police rushed to the place they found a man oiling a stiff rooftop door and swinging the door back and forth to loosen the hinges. That is a true story.
A few years ago a doctor told this story at a dinner party. He was called out to Dom Mintoff’s house because he was ill. There was a sudden power cut. Dom threw one hell of a tantrum because he was convinced that the power cut was an attempt by the government to sabotage the doctor’s call and hence an attempt on his, Mintoff’s, life.
You mustn’t blame Mintoff for that paranoia. In his time, such contrived power cuts were not unknown.
I remember a Sliema power cut coinciding with the stoning, by the usual MLP thugs, of Nationalist supporters, leaving a political party meeting in a Sliema cinema near the Ferries. Disappointed by what they considered inadequate police support those MLP thugs succeeded to bring about the early retirement of the police officer in charge who was being framed and accused of obstructing the MLP thugs in their errand of violence.
The North Korean-trained enforcers were the Special Mobile Unit, the SMU. The SAG, Special Assignment Group replaced the SMU when the latter was removed by PN in government following the May 1987 election.
One true anecdote to redress the political balance and to save me (some hope!) from the usual accusation of being a chauvinistic Nationalist bigot.
A very prominent Nationalist politician made an emergency stop at the Sliema police station reporting a suspected ticking time-bomb stuck to his car. A diligent search did not produce a bomb but there was a stuck trafficator signal.
We were certainly living in what the wise Chinese would describe as “interesting” times. May we never give them a chance to recur.
Those times left much more than one “young girl” dead.It was only recently revealed by a past MLP member of parliament. on TV, that he was actually accused of being responsible for that girl’s murder by none other than the girl’s mother herself.
There were other political murders,of course, but thankfully they became things of the past as soon as Dr Eddie Fenech Adami succeeded KMB as Malta’s Prime Minister.
What has Yana Mintoff bland got to say about this? That it ruins her father’s immaculate reputation, perhaps? It is anecdotes like these which should have been included in Dear Dom.
What is just as important, what has that charitable soul, Fr Mark Montebello got to say?