Get yourself cremated by Piju Camilleri (a name that will mean nothing to those under 45)
The ghastly man on the right can tell us a lot about those days.
So now we have one infamous Lorry Sant thug (Ronnie Pellegrini, that seedy scum) on the board of Malta Freeport Corporation under the chairmanship of that idiotic Labour elve Aaaaaron Farrugia, and another infamous Lorry Sant thug who’s planning to make some more money by housing the dead after making pots of it under the Labour regime (and since) by housing the living.
In Malta Today (buried at the end of the story, of course, rather than trumpeted in the headline and intro, as they would have done had be been somebody associated with the dastardly Gonzi):
A proposal for a 1,000-grave cemetery on a site outside development boundaries along Mdina Road between Attard and Rabat now also includes plans for Malta’s first crematorium. The proposal was made by Luqa Developments Ltd, a company whose directors include Pio Camilleri, formerly a close collaborator of the late Labour minister Lorry Sant.
The last time I saw Piju Camilleri was almost 28 years ago. He looked like a compact mad, dangerous beetle, chasing my friend Mary Camilleri and me in a wild rage, with what looked to me like a a bit of garden hose. Later I discovered that this home-made weapon had a name in ther vernacular (I’ve forgotten it) and that it is made by threading a length of heavy iron chain through rubber hose.
Just as he caught up with us, a couple of post office workers literally hauled me inside their building and slammed the massive doors shut. They only had time to grab one of us and I was hugely, visibly pregnant. I did not see what happened next, but Mary ended up in bed for around three weeks, so badly beaten and bruised that she could barely move.
We had been at a peaceful demonstration organised by Zghazagh Ghal Ambjent, to protest against the rampant abuse in building development in green areas. This was in 1985, the Labour regime had reached its nadir and sought to silence all opposition and criticism through violence and retribution.
As we walked through Merchants Street and approached the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is exactly where it is now, we saw the Foreign Minister, Alex Sceberras Trigona, standing in the doorway with no ceremony, dressed in his casual Saturday clothes, engaged in conversation with a bevy of thugs, wearing his usual sarcastic, contemptuous expression.
In a way, we understood immediately what was going to happen, because – unbelievably to children 20 years down the line – we took state oppression and violence for granted in much the same way that the Chinese do, that Libyans did at the time. We had absolutely no idea what it meant to live in a western democracy because we had not grown up in one and were young enough to have scant memory of pre-1971 years.
Within seconds, those thugs were flying at us. Pandaemonium ensued. The demonstrators scattered. Mary, concerned because I was pregnant, began dragging me away but ended up severely beaten herself. At that time, the General Post Office was directly opposite the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in the building which now houses the Tourism Ministry. The post office clerks didn’t come out to get me only because I was pregnant. They knew me because I was at their counters several times a week with mail from the office where I worked.
Saviour Balzan knows all this. He was one of the organisers of that demonstration. Afterwards we met at the Zghazagh Ghal Ambjent offices. There were people there who really needed to see a doctor, but none of them wanted to go to the polyclinic because in those days, you could trust nobody to do with the government if they thought it might be used as evidence against the government.
If you are my children’s age and reading this, you will find this situation incredible, just unbelievable. You will ask how we put up with it. Well, you might as well ask how the people of Eastern Europe, behind their Iron Curtain, put up with what they did. What made our situation more tragic is that it was not imposed by Russian tanks but by a mass of incredibly ignorant people who had no idea what democracy was beyond a cheque for their children’s allowance originally paid for by a bloody dictator called Muammar Gaddafi.
Why was Piju Camilleri there with his thugs and construction workers to beat up demonstrators? Obviously, because we were demonstrating against outrageous building development which he, among others, was carrying out with the sanction and cooperation (if not actual involvement) of Works Minister Lorry Sant.
Oh and incidentally, and this is not a minor detail, the man who was acting prime minister last week (Il-Guy) was part of this government and a cabinet minister.
Ask me again why I didn’t vote for this scum.
What made it all worse, of course, is that Alex Sceberras Trigona knew me, knew Mary Camilleri, knew several others in that demonstration, and recognised us. He definitely recognised me. But when the thugs surrounding him flew out at us and began to attack us, he turned his back and disappeared inside his office building.
The last time I saw him was this summer, at the French Ambassador’s residence, during a party to mark Bastille Day. He was sitting at a bar with his wife Joanna Borg (who was married to him already back then and enjoying the perks and privileges of being the consort of a regime member, which says a lot about her character whatever anyone else might say, and I’ll always keep that in mind) and the tinpot Boadicea of Building Controls, Astrid Vella. They’re good friends and were deep in chatty conversation.
And I thought to myself: oh blessed irony. What a country. Or more to the point, what people.
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Malta was always a horrible place to call home when Labour governed and it hasn’t changed.
The reins of power in Malta are in the hands of ‘pimps, thieves and scoundrels’.
The description above now patently depicts the incumbents of every level of Malta’s current regime and their appointees from the Prime Minister and his Cabinet Ministers down to the local rat catcher.
Malta has been in such a fascist scenario previously, between 1971-1987, and it survived battered, bruised and bloodied. It is now evident that this period’s fascists and fellow travellers did not derserve the dignified concialiatory policies post 1987.
The prolonged period in the political wilderness seems to have served the fascists of old and their new friends in no positive and liberal way but rather to have fueled their inflamed and rabid opinions and actions.
The previous era of Mintoffian fascism is abundant evidence that there were, and are, no boundaries to how far these ‘pimps, thieves and scoundrels’ will go in their abuse of Malta and the Maltese.
I pray that all current Maltese have the courage and dignity of their ancestors to face down this evil.
[Daphne – As if. They elected the pimps, thieves and scoundrels, just like they did in 1971, 1976 and to all intents and purposes in 1981, to say nothing of 1996. There is nothing so attractive to the Maltese electorate as the potential to harness the power of evil for their own personal purposes. Anybody who suggests otherwise is going to have to pick a fight with me because the way I look at it, this is as clear as day.]
Astrid Vella spent the whole evening with Alex and Joanna Sceberras Trigona, next to that bar, red-faced with chit chat and, to put it mildly, rather tipsy.
“Marelli kemm ilni ma narak.” Flirt, flutter, squeak.
Louis Grech, on the other hand, was visibly irritable, even if only because he showed up halfway through the ambassador’s speech and the ambassador was standing near the doorway at the time, with all eyes on him…and on Louis Grech’s late entrance.
The prime minister was nowhere to be seen.
Is Joseph Muscat delaying the resignation of Louis Grech beyond the pre-election agreed date?
What is Jonathan Brimmer always doing with Ronnie Pellegrini? Is he his new partner or does he tell his mummy that he’s his new friend?
I would not be seen dead with scum like Alex Sceberras Trigona, even making small talk.
“Wearing his usual sarcastic, contemptuous expression” sums up SceberrasTrigona beautifully.
Did any of the ministers, including Leo Brincat, Karmenu Vella and Lino Spiteri, resign in protest over this, and a sequel of other equally serious incidents?
Let us also not forget that people like the ‘the highly regarded’ Louis Grech, his friend and business associate Norman Spiteri and others of their ilk, did their utmost to back the morally corrupt Mifsud Bonnici government, and were close to succeeding.
This kind of mentality is the reason why Labour lost the 1987 election by a mere 4000 votes and the Nationalists got trounced in such a fashion just a few months ago.
‘A proposal for a 1,000-grave cemetery on a site outside development boundaries along Mdina Road between Attard and Rabat’
Let’s all hope this is not the same stretch along the Rabat Road where a number of residencies were being built in the early eighties in flagrant defiance of good taste and the environment.
Construction was finally stopped by the then PAPB following public outcry.
Good going PL – It’s fast forward to the eighties right?
I am under 45 but my parents took me with them to every protest demo and mass meeting they went to, so I know what you are talking about.
Piju Camilleri was a household name to us because Lorry Sant expropriated my grandfather’s land for the public purpose of building four villas and my grandfather never received compensation.
Daphne,
When you were hit by the chain in the hose pipe Saviour Balzan was walking a few metres behind you accompanied and protected by his uncle Inspector Balzan. I am sure that he saw you falling on your knees. He can’t not have done.
I cannot believe that now he is supporting this scum.
All the living bastards have come back to take on where they left off 26 years ago.
Change indeed!
Crematoriums would be handy to have to dispose of murdered bodies as all ground up human ashes look alike.
The chain in the garden hose is called a “nerf” or its Maltese version of spelling although the original nerf was made from a length of 1/2 inch diameter steel cable with the end twisted wires which made up the cable unfurled so the individual wire ends can scourge the skin and flesh when violently struck with it.
There was another bully weapon of choice in Malta that was popular in pre-steam ship British Colonial Malta and that was a stretched and dried bull penis which had a name in Maltese that escapes me at this very moment.
How can someone such as Saviour be a Labour Supporter if he’s experienced the horrors of the Labour Party first hand?
Because he’s a coward.