I disagree completely. The way a man behaves with his wife and children is an inextricable part of his nature and character and you can’t separate it out from the rest of him. Men who are awful to their wife and children are awful men, full stop.

Manuel Dimech spent 20 years in prison. You can’t overlook that. All the available bios on line conveniently gloss over WHY he went to prison and instead talk about prison conditions and how he dealt with them. Those are two separate issues.

Why did he even go to Montenegro? The answer to that strikes me as obvious, given the context of the times: terrorism, and to learn from terrorists. But when he came back he couldn’t find the necessary support for a terrorist cell – not that setting one up would have been possible in a military base.

The way Manuel Dimech is glorified by some people shows the usual Maltese inability to distinguish between personal achievement and social achievement. The fact that Dimech learned how to read and write and began studying and ‘improving himself’ in prison does not make him a social achiever. It reveals him as somebody who could have achieved much had he not been born in the gutter. But the same can be said of hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, who would have done things differently had they been born in a different time and place, and in different circumstances.

I really do not believe we should discuss his parental abilities.

What counts is what he did to Malta.

Kieku l-PN riedu, setghu tawh gieh u mhux ihallu lil xi Montebello jpengih bhala socjalist.

Izjed milli kontra l-faqar, Dimech kien kontra l-injuranza u kulhadd jaf li l-PN hu l-partit ewlieni kontra l-injurwnza.

Li kien ghal haddiehor, ghadna bla computers.

Care to define “dak li hu Malti”? You superpatriots have been using this phrase for fifty years, and I’ve yet to understand its meaning, assuming there is one.

Was Strickland “dak li hu Malti?”

Is Edward de Bono “dak li hu Malti”?

Was Monsingor Pantalleresco “dak li hu Malti”?

I don’t know where these men get off being celebrated as heroes and maximum achievers when they are notable failures in their primary duty and purpose.

Yes, 300,000 euros down the drain and a pockmarked building is the sad result for ever and ever. It’s irreversible. I just hope all those responsible for this disgraceful disaster will be made to answer for it. The public is owed and deserves an explanation for this
flagrant vandalism.