There are some real misogynists on Women for Women

Right now I am being clawed, bitten and having my hair pulled out by the usual suspects on the Facebook group Women for Women, because of this article. For women who claim to be all about women’s rights and issues, a few of them are surprisingly free and loose with words like “harridan”. But never mind.

They accuse me of being “badly misinformed”, say that I “never check my sources”, and one of the group administrators, Jelena Dimke – who knows full well that what I wrote is correct, unlike those members who don’t keep up with the news – is busy calling me “paranoid and delusional”. Because that’s what the sisterhood does.

I won’t do the same and insult them, though there’s plenty of basis for insult. I’ll just direct them to the facts. Women for Women has just two administrators, Francesca Fenech Conti and Jelena Dimke. Mrs Fenech Conti ‘owns’ the group – in that it was her idea and she set it up. Not only is Mrs Fenech Conti leading the campaign for abortion legislation (good for her; it’s about time somebody did – my only objection is that she insists on running down the Nationalist Party and championing Labour, when both parties are locked together in opposition to her cause) but she has given an interview to the BBC about it.

What follows is a quote from that interview, in which Mrs Fenech Conti, who set up, runs and administers Women for Women, tells the BBC journalist that she is working with pro-abortion campaigners in Ireland and Poland, to help in the campaign for abortion in Malta:

But for Ms Conti, Malta will be unable to hold back the tide of change – even in this hitherto taboo area. “There will be changes soon – that we are even having this conversation is evidence. A year and a half ago I couldn’t discuss these issues with my own sister and cousin – now we talk about it all the time. I’m in touch with campaigners in Ireland and Poland [where campaigners are challenging abortion laws]. It will happen.”

I write this only to point out that no, I am not a lying harridan, misinformed, somebody who doesn’t check her facts, or paranoid and delusional. I am actually completely correct: the person who set up Women for Women and who administers it is one and the same person who is leading the campaign for abortion in Malta. One of the main purposes of setting up the group is to campaign for abortion by driving the discussion.

That discussion needs to be driven, yes, because the situation as it stands is untenable and Gift of Life are intolerable – but it is being driven, unfortunately, along the sub-agenda of denigrating Simon Busuttil and the Nationalist Party and ignoring the fact that the Labour Party is completely opposed to abortion too, that some of its key ministers are even more opposed to abortion than the Nationalists are.

This is not divorce, where Labour was in favour and the Nationalists (stupidly) against. This is abortion, where both Labour and Nationalist are against. Therefore there can be no playing one off against the other, or hurling lanzit at one while praising the other.

And as I told Mrs Fenech Conti myself recently, after another bout of lanzit against “the Nazzjonaliti”: you’re always going on about how terrible the Nationalists are and how wonderfully progressive Muscat and his corrupt goons are, so you’ve clearly forgotten or chosen to overlook why you have your precious EU passport in the first place, and why you almost didn’t.

As for Nikita Zammit Alamango, she is a key member of the Super One/Muscat inner circle – so it follows that if she is present and taking an interest in any debate or pressure group, you have to ask yourself what she is doing there. She is not hanging around with women old enough to be her mother because she is some kind of 20-something weirdo who enjoys the company of middle-aged Sliema housewives.

This is the answer: she’s there to keep tabs on people and what they are saying, to report back to her boss Joseph Muscat and his tight coterie of communications aides. That has been her political job for years – 10 years at least.

The Women for Women administrator may call me “paranoid and delusional” all she likes, but the one thing she can’t contest is that I have been examining politics and politicians, the political parties, those around them, how they work and who runs things behind the scenes, for the last almost three decades. And they haven’t, which is exactly why seasoned political operators like Miss Zammit Alamango and others who I shan’t mention find them so easy to manipulate for their agenda.

Nikita Zammit Alamango is in there to stir the pot against the Nationalists and to keep tabs on what the various group members and administrators are saying or planning, so as to report back to her political masters. She is not a Labour supporter. She actually works for the Labour Party and has done so for years. She is one of its most prominent activists.

And what’s more, Zammit Alamango herself knows I’m right and that I’m onto her, while she thinks that the women she’s dealing with in Women for Women are clueless novices who she can use as tools in the service of Joseph. I think some people need reminding that I’ve been doing this job for a long, long time.