Through persuasion I even converted my father. We made the switch in 1958.

Up to this day, Labour speakers always try to manipulate the poor in mind.

I cannot stand it and most often I turn off their talks on the media.

If some people are poor in education you should help them to educate themselves and not take advantage of their ignorance.

This is exactly what the Labour Party ALWAYS did – take advantage of ignorance of all kinds. This is why I can never ever vote Labour.

Joseph Muscat and his team are trying to deceive the Maltese people with this huge project as everyone in his right senses knows that it is not feasable and that it will have a negative effect on the water and electricity tarrifs.

I assume that Gozo PL supporters went to the meeting to hear about Joseph Muscat’s plans to evolve more work for them, but as usual he did not mention anything and he told jounalists that he will divulge his plans when the time comes and in an opprtune time. No wonder Gozo always voted for the PN.

Can he at least tell us when this opportune time will come?

I seriously cannot believe the reason why at this time and age when the Maltese have matured so much, especially in education and also in mentality, thanks to the ON governments, there are still such an amount of people who vote Labour. I am sure that these voters do not understand politics at all and most of them are brainwashed or illiterate.

My husband said he thinks it’s “ghax Malta taghna”.

I know! Can’t stop laughing long enough to try and understand what the heck she wanted to say with that.

You must be a young person who is repeating hearsay. Any politician, especially before independence, had to take heed of the church’s influence on contemporary society. After the Mintoff-Boffa split the Labour Party became more defiant and belligent in attitude.

But, generally speaking, Mintoff unleashed his vitriolic attack on the Church after his failed Integration Plan with Britain. He attributed this failure mainly to Archbishop Gonzi’s insistence on guarantees for safeguards to the Catholic Church’s position in Maltese society. The Nationalists naturally were against Integration and they preferred a Dominion Status (like Canada).

It is true that the Church was openly ridiculed and vilified by the MLP, particularly as a result of the imposition of religious sanctions at elections which hinged on the (in)famous Six Points. It is equally true, however that many, many Labour supporters continued their usual religious practices. This paradox was emblematic of the MLP slogan: Ma’ Kristu Iva, mal-Knisja Le!

It is convincingly argued that Maltese society really started to feel alienated from the Church after Independence, with the economic boom that followed the PN’s drive to industrialise the country and open it to foreigners via tourism. It is the new-found political and cultural freedom, coupled with increased material wealth and interaction with foreigners and new attitudes, that eroded the church’s influence.

As a matter of fact, during the first years of the new Labour govt., as the political climate became tense and the economy continued to slow down (at the same time as the OPEC oil-crisis raised its head), Maltese society become more inward-looking and parochial. People again started to flock around the church, this time not for guidance or religious practice, but to organise more lavish and extravagant village festas.

One of the first things Labour did then was to ‘liberalise’ external festivities in the sense that secondary feasts were put on equal footing with that of the patron saint festa. (Guze Cassar). The resurgence in village festas experienced then continues unabated to ridiculous levels to this day.

When claiming that Mintoff put a stop on the Church’s influence on society, one should remember that normally it is the concrete gamut of economic conditions that determine the dominating culture and ideology of a society.

Jason, who else. He’s dying to take his place.

Spot on.

Clearly, reducing the power that the church had over the electorate.

No matter what you say, the church had to be put in its place. Obviously, the way in which Mintoff went about doing it was disgusting and out of spite more than anything – but the result was positive. We can’t have the Archbishop telling us what to do.