Mintoff did not actually shut down the desalination plant. The plant broke down and parts were available only in the US. The story goes that the anti-Western Mintoff was refused the parts, thus the plant had to be shut down. Apparently some repairs were attempted unsuccessfully at the Dockyard.

And that’s the mentality the present government seems to be adopting.

Horrible reminders of the ‘gvern tat-tqancic’ that we were burdened with at that time.

Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, aka KMB, Mintoff’s anointed successor, was never short of brilliant money-making plans either.

On one occasion he dispatched Foreign Minister Alex Sceberas Trigona, aka AST, to the oil-rich ‘idle Eastern states’ to try and con what KMB perceived as financially sub-literate oil sheiks into lending Malta millions in pounds sterling at 2%.

The idea was that Malta would then reinvest at far higher interest rates (and so at far greater financial risk) and keep the difference.

Imagine that.

One of the last great financial wheezes by the KMB regime was to convert all of Malta’s foreign currency reserves into US dollars when dollar value was rocketing up, only Malta bought in when the dollar was at an unsustainable all-time high and with predicable results, e.e. a loss in value of several million in as many days.

Tassew ma hawnx bhal-Labour – ghal-grazzja t’Alla.

With telephone equipment, Mintoff intended to go further than the reinstallation of outdated Strowger phone exchanges.

His economic plan was to take up as any such phone exchanges as possible, doll them up a bit and sell them onwards to ‘suwed’ – that is, to the tinpot dictators who were progressively taking over as their personal fiefdoms the former British and French colonies.

That was investment for him.
He tried the same thing with telephone equipment that was being discarded by others.

May I bring to the reader’s attention that 25,000 KW is 25 Mega Watts.

If I’m not mistaken, that was the capacity of five generating sets (General Electric) of which it was planned that for the next SIX years.

Three would be running, one would be on standby and one on preventive maintenance.

So the spare capacity was two generating sets. The scarcity of water was addressed by using the “waste” energy produced by the boilers plus some fuel to produce (by distillation) potable water from sea water.

Up to the late 1970s the Labour government did not lift a finger to install new generating sets. The now old ones were past beyond their end of service date and all of them were running at full capacity, with the Marsa chimneys spewing thick black smoke for which our Leo would immediately evacuate the whole area around the power station, at least judging by his order to close the Marsascala Family Park.

The distillers at Marsa and Hondoq ir-Rummien were left to rot, because water was expensive “as whisky” Mintoff said.

In the meantime we had voltage stabilisers installed because TVs would not turn on and our salty water supply was coming (if it reached the purposely installed roof top tanks) from the over extraction of the water table from boreholes.

Ah, the Golden Years.

Sa certu punt, illum in-nazzjonalisti jistaw jiftahhru li kienu dejjem fit-triq it-tajba. Qatt ma bidlu l-principji bazici jew l-ideologija ekonomika ghax il-vizjoni kienet dejjem ewlenija. U Malta rat progress tangibli hafna liema bhalu.

Minn-nahha l-ohra, l-Socjalisti Maltin fl-ahhar qed icedu l-idejologija taghhom u waslu biex jissirqu l-politika nazzjonalista. Diskutibli hafna jekk humiex kapaci jhaddmuha.

Pero jibqa zvilupp politiku mportanti ghal Malta.