Yes, the real problem with Dom Mintoff was that he is actually quite stupid
At last, I’ve come across somebody else who believes, as I do, that the real problem with Dom Mintoff was that he is actually stupid.
Stupidity and spite are, I find, a far worse and more dangerous combination – to the perpetrator as well as his victims – than intelligence and spite.
The rumours about Mintoff being bright were started when he won a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford. But once there, and despite working hard, he only scored a third, which means he may as well have flunked it.
And then, you have that situation in Maltese culture where loud brashness and self-confidence are confused with being ‘smaRRRt’ and ‘wajss’ while silence and circumspection are taken for stupidity and slowness, when in reality it should generally be the other way round.
Look at the way people think Marlene Mizzi is bright, for instance. But she’s just very loud and brash and thinks the world of herself.
Anyway, here is Peter Apap Bologna’s comment, beneath a National Bank of Malta story on timesofmalta.com, yesterday evening.
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Peter Apap Bologna
On this matter of age, I may claim to have an advantage as I am soon to be seventy-one years old. In 1969, the property market was booming. It did not cease to do so until close to the elections. When Labour won (by three votes), Mintoff went straight in to throwing many British people out of Malta , including the Governor General and his family who had been such good friends of Malta (“I stand four square with the people of Malta”, do you remember), at the shortest possible notice. He behaved like a brute, and enjoyed it.
I was there and saw it all at first hand. Of course, the property market collapsed as people rushed, or were forced, to flee the newtyranny. There were never any rumours about the NBM. It was as solid as anyone could wish, absolutely no comparison with BICAl (a comparison which makes me wonder if Mr Farrugia knows what he is tallking about). The NBM was old fashioned but prudent. They lent to people they knew could and would pay back.
Mintoff hated the Cassar Torreggianis and their ilk (I heard this from him at first hand), and just wanted to show off. He made a huge mistake in the way he did so, as he could have got control of the bank simply by injecting new capital thus diluting the shareholding of the families he so detested. But he was in a great hurry, and in my opinion too stupid.
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That he hated the Cassar Torreggianis and their ilk may be so, but I remember being told of a particular liking he had for an Apap Bologna. Strange as it sounds.
Following today’s developments, Peter’s last sentence fits the current PL leader like a glove.
I find the last paragraph extremely intetesting. Mintoff justified what he did by saying that he was saving the bank.
Had he really intended to save the bank, he would have, as Mr. Apap Bologna writes, injected new share capital. We saw this happen when the US and UK governments intervened to save financial institutions a few years ago.
How true is Mr Apap Bologna’s statement that Labour won by only 3 votes in 1971? According to my history book the MLP obtained 4,695 more than the PN. It’s either a case that he’s lying, or whoever recorded the 1971 history entry is way off the mark.
Not sure about the exact details but don’t forget that at the time, governments were elected on the constitution as it stood prior to the January 1987 amendments which meant that it was a majority of seats, not a majority of votes which secured a party’s eligibility to govern. (That is why we had what we had in 1981).
In 1971 it was only a handful of votes (perhaps three might have been stretching it a bit actually I think it was more like 11 or 12) on the Siggiewi district which swung the balance of seats in favour of Labour as they got one more than the PN did there in 1966.
Of course this is a very simplified version of events but that’s the gist of it and you could claim that in spite of Labour’s majority of votes being counted in the thousands in 1971 it was only that crucial handful that allowed Labour to take over.