Must-read comment of the day
Francis Saliba, a doctor who was medical officer in the police force during the what our current acting prime minister, Il-Guy, called the Golden Years of Labour, has sent in this comment with reference to the Elton Taliana scandal.
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My own experience as a police medical officer when John Cachia was a/Commissioner of Police is most relevant because evidently the same practice is coming back in vogue.
This is to be expected when this “new” Labour government recalls from retirement relics from that obscene period in the history of the police force.
I had received reliable information that named members of the CID were overheard plotting, actually inside the Other Ranks Mess in the Police GHQ, to “burn” me.
That same night an attempt was made to set fire to the door of the dispensary actually inside the precincts of the Police GHQ.
On my arrival in the morning I discovered the photographers and reporters of the Labour press, already waiting to record the incident.
I informed promptly the a/Commissioner of Police about the crime and requested that he call the duty magistrate to investigate this clear-cut case of arson of government property.
He refused when I informed him that the culprits were members of the CID, of which he was substantive superintendent.
What followed was a crude, failed frame-up attempt to have me dismissed from my government post based on blatantly perjured evidence.
Though the frame-up failed, I was forced illegally into compulsory retirement “on grounds of public interest” and was impoverished for as long as the MLP remained in power, because even my private practice was obstructed.
This incident suggests that nothing has changed since then.
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On a different subject.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the procedure carried out by the St. Julians Local Council to develop an old people’s home, car park and ofices identical to the one carried out by Energy Minister Conrad Mizzi and the PL to choose the entity that will be contracted to supply the new power station?
No. The St Julian’s project doesn’t compromise Malta’s political position for the next 25 years based on a pre-electoral agreement between the Labour Party and a non-EU state.
On a different note, I was quite disappointed to read this (Helga Ellul on the government):
“It is still early, it will take a bit more time in order to be able to analyse the new government. I think what I am quite satisfied about is that there have not been any big shocks, the country has done well, in job creation and in the economic field, and the most important thing is that people have jobs and an income,” Ms Ellul said.
“They still have to find themselves and establish themselves. After such a long period in opposition, it takes time to find your feet. Being in government, you have to give them time to govern.”
Are we sure that Ms Ellul is competent to undertake a political career?
Having been an outstanding CEO does not guarantee a good politician.
I didn’t have doubts about her before reading these comments, but now it seems that she either doesn’t know what is going on in Malta, or else she is being too diplomatic, which puts her in the wrong place.
Helga knows what the people want, and what our country needs.
Golden years. My dad calls them ‘ zmien il-hruxijiet’
Can’t believe it. The writing so clearly on the wall and Ms Ellul can’t see it. Tut tut.
“Zmien il-hnizrijiet” would be more appropriate, believe you me.
I managed to survive all sixteen years (almost) of it – and remember the jubilation on May 10th 1987 when, finally, the barriers of our prison came crashing down and Malta was freed from the clutches of Mintoff and his henchmen.
Anybody remember Cikku Bezzghani, by any chance?
Dr Saliba certainly does.
I’ll bite, whose Cikku Bezzghani?
Pardon me for my curiosity, but I wasn’t even born at the time, and every Mintoff era story I hear has a distinct dirty pulp fiction magazine tinge to it. Especially the nicknames.
Thank you Dr. Saliba for sharing your “frame up” with us – (I’m no relation to the doctor in question).
A lot of people would have forgotten a lot of such episodes that happened in the so called “golden years” of labour. So much for saying before the elections that we shouldn’t be harping back to those years.
Perhaps reviving and comparing them to what is happening now may be a sort of wake- up call to all those who seem to be hypnotised by the present incumbents.
Those who urged people to vote for change, especially those who did not live those terrible times have a lot to answer for.
Forgive them Lord they did not know what they were doing but also give them the strength to repent and undo the bad they have done – if it is possible..
“A lot of people would have forgotten a lot of such episodes that happened in the so called “golden years” of Labour.
Indeed, many who voted Labour were not even born, or were in their infancy during the ‘Golden Years of il-Guy’.
In a way, this present Labour government is providing them with a refresher course in how not to govern.
Comparisons are odious, they say, but these five years may provide the tonic necessary for brain development for those who voted Labour last March 9.
Dr Saliba’s experience is shocking but sadly was the order of the day in those “Golden Days”.
I know many who lost their income due to some vindictive act of some person or other who had the blessing of the government of the day.
The doctors who dared strike in the 70s suffered the wrath of none other than Dear Dom himself. The tourist guides whose licence was withdrawn simply because they were Nationalist. The transfers to difficult places which resulted in forcing one to leave one’s job due to the sheer impracticality of the location. All people trying to raise a family against the odds.
All they had in common was that they did not support the Labour government of the day. Those who managed to make a decent living did so in spite of the regime of the day not because of it.
Sadly, our failure to learn from our not too distant history means that history is doomed to repeat itself in one form or another. It will be golden as it was then for the likes of il-Guy and his ilk, but not so for the rest of us.
How very true! As if the political genetic make-up disappears, while people fret to put up a number of monuments to the ‘innominable’. Why not have a monument for all the victims (most of them silenced) of Mintoff instead? While civilized nations do not celebrate Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and the like, and actually try to blot them out, we programme to have as many monuments as possible. Can’t understand why the wholesome effort to rewrite history from all sides.
It is important for people like Dr.Saliba to recount their experience on all sorts of abuses suffered under the Socialist regime, because we are moving fast to a repeat performance.
It’s already happening, only no one is talking yet. No one knows for certain who else it is happening to or who really voted for Labour or NP within a certain milieu. There is a certain loneliness to the process of abuse received. It is intended to isolate, not just the individual targeted but his associated sector within that milieu.
It is not safe to talk about matters that are seemingly couched in legalities.
It’s happening at a level where you’re damned if you talk about it and damned if you don’t. You can also be relatively certain that if “a friend” approaches you and happens to be particularly concerned about what’s happening… the plant is there to swing any major threats away from Labour’s camp.
Once the incredulity sinks in to the level of acute realisation and awareness, it will already have been too long an absorption process.
Thanks to Dr Saliba for sharing your experience with us and (hopefully) future generations. His is yet another telling testimonial to Labour’s legacy of twisted justice and governance.
Once again, shame on the switchers and ‘let’s give them a chance’ bunch of fools. The same traits are there now as were then. This time they are more sophisticated and obscure.
Then it was sheer arrogance and dictatorial imposition by one man in the name of ‘national interest’. In those cold-war days, the media and right-headed people were more or less vigilant.
Today, posing as ‘mittelklass’ liberals and progressives, they are abetted by a voracious business class and a wider ‘independent’ media. Money and influence are the only criteria for success.
First it was the unnamed immigrants, now it’s one of us who is served with a grossly-thwarted (in)justice for booking the real culprit in a police fuck-up, on the pretext of procedural irregularities.
Some people prefer to keep it simple but in this small island of ours how can you ignore certain circumstantial facts in this whole saga ? The relationship between Mallia and the Police Commisssioner, Mallia and Taliana, Balzan and Taliana.
What Dr Saliba has described is possible to understand in its complexity because time has passed and similar incidents to what he has described had occurred so permitting a broad understanding of the duplicity that was involved then.
The duplicity that has already happened and that is happening now needs a new shift in comprehension. The fine-tuning required to grasp today’s dangers needs to first understand that nobody is safe and that there is a web connected through several offices and individuals that tightens any noose it chooses to lay out. Elton Taliana was visible.
Others are not.
‘a new shift in comprehension’, I agree.
However, with the advent of the internet and Daphne’s blog, the instantaneous ‘outing’ of wrong-doing by this bunch, compared to Mintoff’s time, will go a long way to reveal the evil as it happens. Thus remedial action can be taken much more quickly.
My experience is just one out of scores of others known to me and which are just as terrible.
I mention mine only because I can do that without seeking clearance from the aggrieved policemen or their families.
Strong and efficient honest policemen often consulted me with tears in their eyes because Police Commissioners were persecuting them mercilessly for political reasons.
Simply put, they were under continuous pressure to shield MLP criminals and not to protect the public.
It was poetic justice that so many of these MLP Commissioners of Police ended their career seeking my professional care.
I can now understand where you are coming from Dr Saliba. Although I don’t always agree with you and have occasionally crossed swords with you on your religious conservatism and John Dalli stance, you have my respect for your steadfast and constant rebuttal of the Privitera (and his like) tripe in the other media.
Having lived through the ‘Golden’ years myself, I can confirm that as Dr Saliba has mentioned, this is just one out of scores of others, and not only in the police force, but in various sectors.
It is no wonder that the Labour party and its hard-core supporters went berserk every time anyone mentioned the past. They were counting on the younger people who have no idea what went on because there was no one to relate the past to them, others who have heard, but if one does not live through an experience one cannot understand the full impact of it, and the short memory of some other people. And it worked!
What never stops to amaze me is the fact that there were all those ‘old familiar’ faces amongst their candidates and most people did not even blink an eye.
Now we are seeing history repeating itself. I, for one am not surprised at all!
Considering that most present-day policemen were either children or teenagers in the 1970s and 1980s, it is worrying that it took only a few months for the bulk of the police force to revert to a pre-1987 mode.
This prompts the question: is there something about being a (Maltese) policeman that corrupts an individual?
Not proven yet that the bulk of the police force has reverted to the pre-1987 mode, only its leader(s). Even during the corrupt 70s and 80s there were many policemen who persisted in a heroic attempt to maintain standards but regrettably most of them suffered the fate that is now being plotted for Inspector Elton Taliana.
In spite of the odds all decent Maltese citizens, Nationalists or Labourites, must raise their voice in strong protest. That kind of eternal vigilance is mandatory if Malta is to retain its grievously threatened democratic freedoms.