The prime minister is a liar: Wenzu Mintoff did not resign from the Labour Party ‘during the darkest period of Malta’s political history’. He so approved of the MLP in that period that he stood for election on its ticket in 1987.

Interviewed at the Palace by a posse of journalists this morning, the prime minister said that he hasn’t heard a single word of criticism about Wenzu Mintoff on the basis of his lack of integrity.

Then he hasn’t read any criticism at all. The essence of practically all the criticism that has been levelled at him and, more properly, at the government for making him a judge has been exactly that: his lack of integrity.

Worse still, the prime minister told a blatant lie. He stood before the reporters’ microphones and said (in rough translation): “Wenzu Mintoff is a principled man, a man who took a stand for justice and what was right during the darkest period – one of the darkest periods – of Malta’s political history. He took that stand even when he ended up alone.”

RUBBISH.

The prime minister was clearly referring to the dying years of the 1980s Labour government as “the worst period, one of the worst periods, of our political history” – a Freudian slip it might well have been, given that he has dragged back to power anybody from that period who is still left alive, including Karmenu Vella and Joe Grima, but he is right.

He is hopelessly wrong, however, about Wenzu Mintoff taking a principled stand against the Labour Party during that period.

Far from taking a principled stand against Labour during the darkest period of its history, when human rights were routinely violated, freedom of speech was suppressed through fire, shooting and other forms of violence, and corruption was endemic with the country over-run and run by thugs and robber-barons, WENZU MINTOFF STOOD FOR ELECTION WITH THAT PARTY.

Yes, Wenzu Mintoff was elected to parliament for the first time IN 1987 ON THE MALTA LABOUR PARTY TICKET. He clearly had no problem with Lorry Sant or his robber-baron corruption, with his ghastly uncle’s hideous policies or with party leader Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici’s leading a convoy of lorries full of drydocks workers to sack the law courts, shops in Valletta and the Archbishop’s Curia.

He did not have a problem with thugs controlled by Labour politicians going on a shooting rampage at PN clubs and killing a man of 26 who just there having a drink. Wenzu Mintoff had so little difficulty with the murder of Raymond Caruana by Labour Party thugs that he stood for election on the Labour Party ticket just six months later.

He did not even have any problem with the fact that the Labour Party had governed Malta for five and a half years when it had won fewer votes than the Nationalist Party.

That’s how principled he is.

Wenzu Mintoff did not resign the Labour whip “in the darkest period of our political history”. He resigned the Labour whip in the early 1990s, when Malta was doing really well, life was calm and peaceful for the first time in living memory for those of Wenzu Mintoff’s and my generation, when people were free to do as they pleased and say what they like, and when the economy was literally booming, so much so that Eddie Fenech Adami was returned to power shortly afterwards.

Wenzu Mintoff didn’t have a problem with Lorry Sant when Lorry Sant was a cabinet minister. That’s why he accepted to stand for election on the MLP ticket alongside Lorry Sant and sit on the same benches in parliament.

For some reason, he developed this problem with Lorry Sant when Lorry Sant was on the Opposition benches post 1987 and no longer in a position to issue corrupt building permits to those who bribed him or create situations in which accountants ended up chopped into pieces and dumped in dry wells.

We will never know the real reason why. If Wenzu Mintoff didn’t object to the human rights violations, rampant corruption and hnizrijiet of the Labour government pre 1987, why would be object to anything done by the Labour Opposition post 1987? All we know is that it culminated with a major scene in parliament in which Lorry Sant produced photographs he’d been hanging on to as blackmail and insurance since the 1970s at least: photographs of Wenzu Mintoff’s mother, naked and in a highly compromising situation in her brother-in-law Dom’s lair at Delimara.

Principled, indeed: a man who stands for election on the Labour ticket in 1987, thereby signalling his approval of murder, shooting, violence, corruption, human rights violations, oppression, burning down of the free press, and suppression of freedom of speech.

Yes, and he also signalled his approval of and consent to the signing of Malta’s treaty with Kim Il Sung’s North Korea. I laugh in the face of anyone who suggests that Wenzu Mintoff is a principled man. And the prime minister is a liar.