The new director of Malta Freeport, in his earlier incarnation as Lorry Sant’s thug, henchman and fixer
There he is, right there, standing behind Lorry Sant and leaning against the wall, ready to pounce if anybody bothers his man, at this street debate in Valletta in the early 1990s.
And that was when life was civilised, when Ronnie Pellegrini couldn’t go around beating people up with immunity from prosecution, as he did in the 1980s.
Back in March 2010 – three years ago – I wrote the following about Ronnie Pellegrini on this website. It turned out fairly prophetic – not that I need powers of prophecy when I’ve been observing these social rejects for 23 years as a political columnist.
Hamallu kien u hamallu baqa – his clothes may have ‘improved’ since the Lorry Sant days (if you can call a pale gold suit with a cream tie an improvement) but the Lorry Sant thinking is still right there.
Ronnie Pellegrini is gearing up for power, though exactly how much of it he’s going to get by clinging to his friend Jason’s coat-tails remains unclear.
I have a bad feeling that when Joseph Muscat becomes prime minister, he is going to be completely unable to control these people. Let’s face it – he can’t even control them now.
Alfred Sant disappears and they’re straight out of the woodwork, picking up where they left off, wearing the better clothes, driving the nicer cars, and spending the money that Nationalist Party policies – and only those – have made possible. Sickening.
At the time, Ronnie Pellegrini had written this about me on Facebook (really appropriate for a man of his great age):
Ronnie Pellegrini
Alex napprezza jekk ma tkomplix thammeg il-fb billi toqghod issemmi lis-sahhar jew il-mizbla tal-bidnija. Halliha tifga fid-demm ahdar taghha u tiehu hsieb l-intiena li ghandha fir-razza taghha.
Lovely man, isn’t he? Tomorrow I’ll tell you about the time when Ronnie Pellegrini and his Labour mates severely beat up a security guard by kicking him with safety boots and laying into him with a crash helmet, then punching in the face two men who came to his aid, smashing the nose and spectacles of one of them and knocking out the other’s teeth.
And how the police refused to take action, because Ronnie Pellegrini was protected by the Labour dictatorship in its dying weeks.
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U ta’ warajh John Agius kunsillier San Giljan.
Dan hu iehor tal-Marmalja Ukoll.
Who would have said that Wenzu Mintoff (and Toni Abela) left the Malta Labour Party of Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici because of those violent lot, only to return to the Malta Labour Party of Joseph Muscat and find that the same lot are still there, and have now regained power?
Anyone who lived in Malta under Labour in the 1970s and the 1980s would know that with Labour, anything is possible, and that nothing was to be taken for granted.
One would never know when Mintoff would wake up one fine day and decide that he wanted to take over your property or business, for example. And yes, even trivial necessities, like electricity and water, were never taken for granted, especially by those who lived in Sliema. I remember getting up in the middle of the night hearing a trickle of water flowing into the pipes, and getting into the shower, only to realise that the water was switched off as soon as it came on.
Unfortunately, people seem to have forgotten what Labour are capable of, and had it too good under the Nationalists, hence their readiness and spite at voting the same bastards in.
What a banana country. Why does Muscat embrace these low class people? Even Alfred Sant discarded them.
Imma kien jghazel lil min isawwat kemm qabel u issa izjed ghax-xjah.
What bothers me is that the immunity lingered on and on after 1987 …
He was actually granted a pardon, before even reaching the courts.
One of the biggest failings of the Nationalists, not seeing justice done.
The least they could have done is to wait for all those savages to be tried and sentenced and then, only then, if they really felt the need to, pardon them.
But no, this was one area where PN REALLY couldn’t see the wood for the trees.
So let us hope that the new PN leadership will not make the same mistakes as their predecessors.
That why the PN lost the last election because they let too many nasty LP supporters in government departments who were recruited for their political affiliation rather than their ability. These hindered the PN government at every opportunity to make the government look bad.
Been saying all along that Joseph Muscat is little more than a puppet manipulated by the Old Labour hard core that got back into the party driving seat by propping him up into party leadership.
Now they let him play prime minister at Castille, while their hands are firmly and dangerously grasping all the levers of power.
My thoughts exactly. I am so glad that the likes of Astrid Vella and Kenneth Zammit Tabona are getting what they so truly deserved, especially with Kenneth, the ultimate snob, obliged to mingle with that trashy crowd for … what, exactly?
At least he’ll have a new and fascinated audience for his extremely tedious anecdotes about the Maltese aristrocracy to which he believes he belongs.
The only problem is that the rest of Malta will have to suffer the consequences of their selfish and blinkered stupidity.
Lovely and handy guy to have as a director of Malta Freeport, just in case some ship captain decides not to pay his dues. Pellegrini will make sure that all payment due will be paid.
I can’t understand why, if this man did commit crimes, his immunity from prosecution didn’t end when the government changed.
I can understand the logistical problems of a witness protection scheme on a small island, but still.
Did any victims of his not take some sort of revenge?
[Daphne – Not really, no. By definition you wouldn’t have that sort of personality. That’s a Labour personality, really, isn’t it. And a Labour person wouldn’t have been his victim.]
I look forward to reading about his alleged ‘crimes’.
May well help with my understanding of why he appears to have got away with it.
Alexander Ball, we need to teach you the ancient and timeworn ways of this island. People here have no concept of right or wrong. At best, they know what’s right for them, as in “maximum profit for minimum effort”. If you wish to understand why Mintoff’s criminals, and Mintoff himself, got away with it, look no further. We are a horribly amoral, evil people, and no European passport will ever change that.
Alexander Ball, why he got away with everything can be explained in one word: reconciliation. He was not the only one.
Baxxter, you could not have put it better. No amount of statuti, kostituzzjonijiet and I do not know what else are going to change matters, it seems. If in all these years of PN admin the Maltese societal fabric and way of thinking have remained the same, what hope there is for these islands? Zero. A pessimistic assessment, true, but from what I see around me, also realistic
Which of those men is exactly Lorry Sant? The one talking on the mic?
[Daphne – Yes. The other two are Georg Sapiano and Wenzu Mintoff.]
Lorry Sant is not the one talking on the mic. But he is the one threatening and insulting Wenzu Mintoff with a microphone so that all Valletta can hear him.
Pity we can’t have repeats of this for V 2018 – it’s pure culture of Maltese expression and temper.
I cannot stop saying the same thing: how could people not see through Joseph Muscat? It was so obvious, that you had to be deaf, dumb and blind not to see it coming.
I guess it boils down to standards and expectations. I realised pre/post elections that I used to know a lot of people who had no standards at all.
A lot of people do. A lot of people already regret ‘giving him a chance’ because we ‘needed a change’. I know I didn’t need one. The rest only watch Super ONE.
Geordie, from where do you get this ‘a lot of people do’? I have come across no public statements of pentiti as I have seen public statements on bill boards and taht it-tinda prior to March 9th.
This is what the majority voted for. Bliss was boring.
Yes, do please tell us.
What about declaring his bank assets from day one?
Was Lorry Sant part of the AD?
[Daphne – Of course not! He was arch Labour.]
Why was Georg Sapiano there?
[Daphne – He was the moderator.]
Maria, can you imagine Lorry Sant and Wenzu Mintoff sitting next to each other in a debate in Valletta in the early 1990s without someone between them?
Lorry Sant was already leaning too much on Georg Sapiano. Anzi dak ma qallux “tmissnix jekk joghgbok,” kif kien qallu Alfred Sant meta biss messu.
I think this was a public discussion organised by AD (hence their logo as a backdrop). Georg was probably representing the PN.
Pardon me, but I’m too young to remember this. This is a very infamous photo that gets published time and time again when Lorry Sant is mentioned. What was the meeting all about (in a nutshell)?
Thanks, Daphne.
[Daphne – I was there, but can’t remember. It was some kind of debate organised by AD, between its new founder Wenzu Mintoff and Lorry Sant, the man who, as it turned out, tried to blackmail Wenzu Mintoff with the very same pictures he’d used all along to blackmail his uncle Dom. It was held in Freedom Square (so appropriate) in Valletta. Georg Sapiano was a media personality at the time and was there as moderator.]
I still remember Ronnie Pellegrini very clearly from my secondary school days.
He was always a bully and it is no surprise he was aide to the father of all bullies, Lorry Sant.
The biggest mistake a nation can do is forget its past by not recounting to the young that certain types of characters tend to flock together as in the PL.
Imagine Germany trying to bury Hitler’s years because these were shameful years.
I would like the readers of this blog to listen to a speech given by Benjamin Freedman in 1961 explaining the events that lead to Germany’s ‘revenge’. Benjamin Freedman converted from Judaism and is talking from first hand experience.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhFRGDyX48c
Tghid il-Lorry qieghed jghidlu b’dawk “ir-ritratti”?
Ghalkemm ma naqbel assolutament xejn mal mod kif tikteb fuq il-laburisti, qishom il-laburisti kollha jaqaw taht l-istess keffa u li n-nazjonalisti kollha genwini, jibqa l-fatt li lili ma jdejjaqni xejn il-mod kif tikteb. Din hi l-opinjoni ta DCG u HADD m’ghandu dritt li jwaqqafa. Ikkritikawha kemm tridu pero id-dritt huwa tahha li tikteb kif trid u fuq min trid. Laburist Honest.
In the early 80s Ronnie Pellegrini was a Bortex employee.
Wow!
The fact that Alfred Sant more or less resigned (called an election to do so) shows how impossible his task of ruling amongst so many gangsters was.
Alfred Sant was too intellectual and too strong willed to ever be a successful MLP leader.
By appointing so many cretins and thugs (Jason, Ronnie, Sigmund and all the rest) PL has just shot itself in the foot. 5 years on it will be served with the entry ticket to many decades in opposition. People trusted them but they did not live up to the opportunity they received.
Over the years, a lot has been said about Lorry Sant and his circle. It is now time for the PN and NGOs to push for an investigation through the Maltese and European courts.
‘Sahhara’? Why’s that? Because you don’t sport heavy gold chains, a score of bangles on each arm and 70s Dolly Parton hair?
[Daphne – No, their idea of the ideal female look has changed. So now it’s because I don’t starve myself into a pair of size 6 ‘jeans’ at 48, don’t wear 6-inch stilettos from 7am to midnight, don’t compete with the daughter I don’t have, don’t wear make-up and don’t dye my hair black/highlight it blonde/tug it three times a week into a lifeless rug, don’t wear Beirut-cafe-style outfits, don’t flirt and whine, actually have some conversation. The idea of somebody as uneducated, hideously ugly, vulgar, stupid and common as Ronnie Pellegrini actually daring to criticise anyone else is, of course, laughable. But that’s just more evidence of his stupidity and lack of self-awareness.]
Oh, I’ve been away for far to long to notice a mutation in their neurons.
I wouldn’t qualify it as ‘laughable’ but as ‘surreal’.
Could anyone get hold of his CV (from primary school till the-university-he-did-not-attend, qualifications, the posts he occupied, successes in directorship)?