Former chairman of Malta Communications Authority writes about police obtaining phone logs: ‘Are we back to 1984?’
Published:
September 3, 2013 at 11:03am
Antonio Ghio, former Malta Communications Authority chairman, whose resignation was demanded abusively by the incoming Labour government
Antonio Ghio, who until a few months ago was chairman of the Malta Communications Authority but whose resignation was abusively demanded by the incoming Labour government (national governments may not ask for/force the resignation of EU-regulated authorities), has written about the matter of the Police Commissioner obtaining people’s phone logs from telecoms providers.
His piece is published today on the blog ICT Law Malta, and is called ‘Are we back to 1984?’
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http://ictlawmalta.blogspot.com/2013/09/are-we-back-to-1984_3.html
Dr Ghio should not have given into pressure and resigned. This piece shows how important it is to have somebody who can stand up to the government as head of an EU-regulated authority, rather than a government stooge.
“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power.
What pure power means you will understand presently.
We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites.
The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal.
We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end.
One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”
― George Orwell, 1984
Under oath, it was stated that when Mintoff was challenged whether the steps he was taking in the takeover of the National Bank of Malta were in line with the provisions of the Constitution, his answer (translated into more polite English) was
“I could not care less what the Constitution says.”
Mintoff’s approach is being resurrected from the grave.
[Daphne – His exact words were: “Jien nigi nitnejjek mill-Kostituzzjoni.” He said them to one of my grandfathers.]
“Il lupo perde il pelo ma non il vizio”
“Jien nigi nitnejjek mill-Kostituzzjoni.”
So do the likes of Mugabe.
I have very unpleasent memories of those horrible three days in December 1973 when as a National Bank of Malta cashier I dispensed thousands of pounds to panic-stricken depositors who had heard Mintoff’s concerted appeal to stop the run since ‘il-bank diga qieghed fuq tlett saqajn…tkomplux ghax inthom tbatu.”
He did it deliberately, to make the stampede worse, a stampede he had provoked himself with rumours, threats and insinuations. I still recall the bank chairman Louis Vella and his fellow directors Philip Attard Montalto and Austin Cassar Torregiani returning from the prime minister’s office following the premeditated last act of drama. Within a few hours it was all over – a planned and executed act of evil.
Totally a planned and executed act of evil.
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