No it didn’t. That’s when you first watched it.

Xarabank started in 1997.

http://www.businessinsider.com/39-photos-of-vladimir-putin-2013-3?op=1

He doesn’t need to rig to polls, because despite all you said, he is a likable person and a lot of Russians admire and like him. The men want to be like him and the women want to you-know.

If you have contacts among the Resistance, activate them. The weakest link is Manuel Mallia, specifically his leadership ambitions.

Malta Tana Lkoll has been prostituted for one thousand million Euros to 1800 billionaires – from China, Azerbaijan, the Middle East – and to their friends.

The point on which I disagree is your parallel. Consider this: Putin came to power after Boris Yeltsin, possibly the worst leader that Russia has ever had, if we include Soviet Russia. It’s like anyone in Malta coming to power after Mintoff.

And you’re absolutely wrong about the sophistication. If there’s one thing that distinguishes Soviet Communism from its Chinese or Southeast Asian counterparts it’s precisely that it kept the sophistication alive.

Which Malta didn’t. We destroyed all traces of sophistication even when the Communists weren’t in power. Xarabank was first aired in 1992.

Muscat has no philosophy at all. That makes him a sort of mini-Putin, but without the trophy wife and poncy shows of manliness.

I’m afraid you miss the point: I make no claim to know Russia, but I can recognise opportunism.

The parallel is the manner in which the tools of democracy are being exploited to create an elected autocracy.

Of course the history is different, but the Maltese, like the Russian masses, respect a strongman more than they do an intellectual.

They prefer brute force and cunning, rather than reason and debate. There lies the comparison.

Perhaps the greatest sin of the Soviet Union was that it abolished sophistication: the Russians of good taste fled or were choked.

We’re not quite there yet, but there is potential.