A salutary lesson for those with delusions of grandeur
This is Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici aka KMB, the Labour prime minister who oppressed Malta between 1984 and 1987, after Dom Mintoff stepped down and appointed him party leader and prime minister in his stead. His was the most corrupt and dangerous government Malta has ever known since the start of self-government.
Under his aegis, the island literally fell apart at the seams, with economic stagnation, sky-high unemployment, empty shops, a reign of terror by violent thugs, corruption and rampant bribery and large parts of the population in Malta’s ‘punishment zone’ left without water in the taps for weeks on end in the height of summer.
KMB was also leader of the Opposition from 1987 to 1992, when he made the headlines repeatedly with his interesting pronouncements on how joining the European Economic Community would give us AIDS, how we would be over-run by Sicilian hairdressers, and how Maltese women should be warned that they would end up living in houses the size of rabbit-hutches.
And he still got 45% of the vote in the 1992 general election (and almost won the 1987 election before that).
He would ride down Valletta’s main drag on the back of a lorry, surrounded by cheering thugs and followed by a convoy of drydocks vehicles mounted by dockers slinging heavy chains and other weapons. Wherever he went, thugs and supporters went wild with pleasure – GHAX GHANDNA L-KARMENU MAGHNA, AHNA MAGHQUDIN. VIVA L-LABOUR VIVA L-LABOUR VIVA L-LABOUR – while everyone else shrank away and waited for the violence to erupt and for the police to come swarming in…to help the thugs.
Now here he is, walking lonesome and downcast through that same street in Valletta where, 30 years ago, he was borne in glory on a Drydocks lorry protected and celebrated by Malta’s worst elements, celebrated as a hero by tens of thousands of Labour supporters.
Nobody speaks to him. Nobody stops him. Nobody approaches him or even so much as looks in his direction. One or two people might look up slightly as if to say ‘Oh yes, I remember him. God, it’s hard to believe he terrorised Malta.’
Is it because he was Malta’s worst prime minister? No. I remember George Borg Olivier in the same abject solitude on a bench at Fond Ghadir, Sliema, in the late 1970s. Until the first year of that decade, he was prime minister, and until 1976, leader of the Opposition. And in 1979, he was just another man in his 60s on a promenade bench.
It’s a sensible prime minister and Opposition leader who knows that people only want to know you as long as you are in power or have the realistic potential to be. Otherwise it’s just a quick wave and move along.
As for Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, I look at him and try to remember how we despised him for turning Malta into a frightening, dangerous place full of corruption and violence, how we feared him or rather, what he would do next. And all I see is a shambolic old man trundling along ignored by the people who until 22 years ago were tearing their hair out in adoration at his feet.
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Like Alfred Sant, KMB has no regrets.
E avanti a lui, tremava tutta Roma. With apologies to Puccini’s Tosca. Tosca’s dramatic exclamation while she looked at the lifeless body of her tormenter Sic transit gloria mundi.
I am still very shocked by the fact that given his allowance of terror and vandalism in public when drydocks and socialist thugs had a free hand in so many criminal deeds, he never paid a price for his fascist styled politics in our courts, let alone the fact that people are still taken to court and given their punishment (warning, fine or imprisonment) for deeds or words of a much lesser serious content.
KMB – his ZERO nickname was and still is fully justified. He gave nothing to his country.
I always saw KMB as a puppet on a string . Cannot see how he could have accepted such behaviour in those days. I don’t think he had any say, or.the power to stop them.
It is about time criminal charges were brought against him.
A living fossil, a shrunken relic of a dinosaur puppet.
I still feel the terror down my spine led when I remember the rampage led by him at the Floriana Curia – heralded by a frightening shrieking crowd of the ‘aristokrazija tal-haddiema’ as it made its way near Porte des Bombes.
I could see it from my office in the vicinity and, on the morrow, the effects of the ‘friendly’ visitation of the savage locusts on what, more than twenty years before, had been my school.
The comparison with the late Dr Giorgio Borg Olivier, however, even though certainly not meant to be offensive, jars terribly.
I was not only respectfully familiar with the PN leader at the time of his premiership, but remained even more so after his electoral defeat – and the subsequent insolent treatment he received at the hands of Mintoff and his wild mob.
Fate had me near the Palace courtyard on the day of Mintoff’s ‘triumphal’ entry in Valletta and in the Office of the Governor on that cursed June day in 1971.
Everyman’s Encyclopaedia carries a photo of the new PM, accompanied by his private Secretary Joe Camilleri and the Governor’s ADC (Captain or Major) Claude Gaffiero, on his way into Sir Maurice Dorman’s offices to almost literally – but unceremoniously – throw him out of Malta.
I also remember vividly the mob’s crowding around a pick-up carrying a young heifer, as part of the spoils of Labour’s victory accompanying the victor on his vengeful march.
Wow, for a second i thought that was Alfred Hitchcock.
Oh look, it’s another jerk who expects to be called the ‘Honourable’ for life.
If you want permanent respect learn to respect the people first and don’t treat them like ‘xi cuc Malti’.
U halluna.
There was the punishment zone and the ‘don’t you dare ask for The Times, In-Nazzjon or Il-Mument’ zone.
The Democrat never made it to the latter.
Schizoid personality disorder.
A classic example.
This man is to PL what the Nazis are to Germany today, a shameful and dark part of history.
The bemused look on the poster model is brilliant.
A sad, strange, opinionated figure who found refuge in the supporters’ adulation.
What has happened to his battered and beige VW beetle?
A miser like him would normally keep it running and on the road till he died.
Nowadays he drives a Toyota Vitz.
We also used to refer to him as iz-Zero.
Lest we forget.
Dark days we went through when he was in government.
What worries me is that the new generation have it good and may not be aware of what we went through, to finely come to where we are.
History can repeat itself and can also be a good teacher.
We should present this to our children in an objective way, to allow them to make their own decisions on facts. Otherwise the same mistakes will be repeated. Just have a look around at what arguments some individuals are coming up with.
KMB aka ‘Zero’ now really living up to it.
At first glance I thought this was something ironic about the poster KMB is walking in front of.
The model in the middle looks as if she’s looking down on him, pitying him almost. An old sad lonely man walking by.
“And someday in the mist of time
When they ask you if you knew me
Remember that you were a friend of mine
As the final curtain falls before my eyes
Oh when I’m old and wise” by Alan Parsons fit nicely.
Come now, there’s nothing to pity about a former prime minister. If it was me, I’d be enjoying the fruits of my career with that model.
Mintoff did.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
The picture of KMB that sticks most in my memory is that on TV in an interview before the 1987 general election results.
He was subdued, looking at a carnation, that looked wilting to me, on a table in front of him, admitting that one regret he had was that he may have disappointed his mother who had passed away not long before.
He had tried to persuade me to come back to government service, not serving under Alex Sceberras Trigona, but I could not accept because he was ultimately responsible for what he had allowed his ministers and supporters to do.
In my eyes, he redeemed himself, somewhat, when he entrusted security surrounding the vote-counting hall to the overall command of Brigadier Maurice Calleja, and that of access to the hall to Col. John Spiteri, who warned Police Commissioner Lawrence Pullicino in no uncertain terms that he would not permit a repetition of the treachery perpetrated under police eyes during a suspension of a magisterial enquiry to plant evidence to incriminate the innocent Peter Paul Busuttil with the murder of Raymond Caruana.
The Malta Labour Party had, in fact, asked for a suspension of the counting of votes, but KMB had earlier expressed his fears to Brigadier Calleja that he feared that persons from a certain town would tamper with the vote-counting process.
Unfortunately, KMB’s behaviour, and utterances, after that reverted to the old ways.