1970s cabinet minutes ‘missing’? Why assume minutes were taken?
Times of Malta reports:
Cabinet documents to be made available for study – 1970s minutes missing
Cabinet minutes and memoranda between 1962 and 1981 are to be made available for research purposes by the National Archive, the government said today.
The documents were handed over by the Office of the Prime Minister during a visit to the archive in Rabat by Mario Cutajar, Cabinet Secretary.
The minutes of Cabinet meetings held in the 1970s have not been found, except for notes which have also been handed over and will be made available.
Why is the assumption being made that minutes were taken in the 1970s and that they are missing? Given the mentality and attitude of the prime minister at the time, Dom Mintoff, it is more rational to assume that the minutes are NOT missing, but that they never existed because they weren’t taken.
Are the minutes of cabinet meetings in the early 1980s available? That would give a clearer perspective for the purposes of comparison.
In any case, I don’t understand what the government means by saying that it is making available the minutes of cabinet meetings between “1962 and 1981” with the qualifier that those of the 1970s are missing. So what they are making available, in fact, is the minutes of Borg Olivier’s cabinet meetings of the 1960s. Or do we also have, oddly, minutes for 1980 and 1981, but not for 1971 to 1979?
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http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140123/local/cabinet-minutes-to-be-made-available-for-study-1970s-minutes-missing.503825#.UuF_nbA1gdU
Surely the Opposition would have taken minutes. If not why?
[Daphne – These are cabinet meetings: the government. The Opposition is not involved.]
I mean in 1970 Nationalist government.
It says 1971-79.
Beingpressed, it is very late.
Please, please go to sleep.
Looks like Joseph Muscat has racked up another oppressive dictator as a buddy:
http://tvi.ua/new/2014/01/23/yak_berkut_namahavsya_zabraty_poranenykh_iz_likarni_shvydkoyi_dopomohy_video_tvi
Injured protesters who lay in hospital were abducted by plain-clothes police and secret service personnel. They were beaten up, stripped naked and thrown in the snow.
This is the sort of democracy with which the Malta Labour Party is comfortable.
And our foreign minister, on a trip to Ukraine last month, claimed to have heard and seen nothing untoward.
So these are the same people who were scandalised because no formal minutes were maintained by Enemalta for the purchase of fuel oil for the electricity division.
Literally – Karmenu Vella was already around then.
Mintoff did not like holding cabinet meetings , especially when he was challenged by the likes of Lino Spiteri or Lorry Sant.
Minutes? What minutes? Of Mintoff swearing abuse at his ministers? Of his other ministers too afraid to whimper in support of their colleagues knowing that it could well be their turn to be shouted down?
Why should we be surprised that no minutes were taken?
It wouldn’t take much from “Jiena nitnejjek mill-Kostituzzjoni” to Jiena nitnejjek mill-minuti.
Naturally, in Mintoff’s eloquent style.
1970s cabinet meetings. Minutes? What minutes? Is this an entire nation in denial?
Please, can we all stop reducing our so-called country’s political history to ridicule?
Another lie by Times of Malta disguised as clumsy English? Wouldn’t it be easier to say that what is being made available are the minutes of the Borg Olivier Cabinet?
The cover ups continue. So many years later.
Will the present government, during Minister’s meetings, I suppose taking notes, or scribbles, also disappear?
The revision of history continues.
What is it exactly that Mario Cutajar wanted to dig up?
Was there a misplaced skull or a personal vendetta he’s been scheming on for many years, just needing the final touch of his much-missed erstwhile great leader?
Once when Edgar Mizzi was on one of his frequent visits to Geneva in connection with the Malta/Libya dispute before the ICJ, I complained to him that I was often being asked to carry out tasks without any written instructions which would show that I was acting on official directives.
His answer was that Mintoff had said in his presence that historians may come to the conclusion that he was illiterate because he was averse to committing himself in writing.