Stejjer tal-wahx (Part 1)
In one of the comments sections, somebody posted this quotation from an infamous speech by Dom Mintoff in December 1979, just two months after Malta endured its worst rain-storm ever, in which two people drowned. I’m re-posting it here because it perfectly encapsulates the Labour government’s approach to the ‘modernisation’ of Malta’s infrastructure.
“Ghandna progett iehor ukoll, li fih ahna rridu naghmlu li nistghu biex nghinu lil kullhadd halli nibnu tankijiet tal-gebel u mhux tal-hadid u anqas tal-konkos, biex nifrankaw il-flus li jmorru barra minn Malta. Mill-bejt, l-ilma jigri fit-tank tal-gebel li jkun fil-gholi u mit-tank tal-gebel imur fil-viti tal-kanna, ghall-ikel u ghax-xorb. Iz-zejjed jaqa fil-bir. Il-ministeru tax-xoghlijiet diga ghamel mudelli ta dawn it-tankijiet.”
– Dom Mintoff addresses the nation on 28 December 1979
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this is from The Independent …
Newly elected MP Beppe Fenech Adami, the son of former prime minister and current President Eddie Fenech Adami, and Valletta mayor Paul Borg Olivier, nephew of former Prime Minister George Borg Olivier, are two other possible candidates.
While Dr Fenech Adami told The Sunday Times that he would probably contest the post of PN secretary general if Dr Busuttil was not interested in the post, sources close to the PN told The Malta Independent that Dr Borg Olivier is likely to be one of the PN insiders’ favourite candidates” (
http://www.independent.com.mt/news.asp?newsitemid=69157
I hope this story has been invented by Marie Benoit!!!!
They should appoint PBA ambassador to Zimbabwe…or has the PN already given up on winning the next election??
@David S – ignore all the flying kites. Take it from me that the only preferred candidate is Simon Busuttil, except that he isn’t a candidate, given that he has yet to be persuaded to leave a situation in which he is very happy.
For the attention of the younger Maltese. This is what state our dear country was in, more than eight years into a Labour government which some people still hail as the glory and salvation of Malta. This was when I regularly carried a garbage bag full of dirty nappies in the boot of my car hoping to find some kind relative or friend, who actually had water in her taps, to wash them for me. This is what I still have nightmares about. Zghazagh Maltin if you do not believe me it is only thanks to the PN who for the past twenty years has provided you with a country to live in that is the envy of Europe. Please keep it this way.
Anthony, our country is far from being the envy of Europe, but I get your point.
I remember that time as I was a teenaged and it was tal-biza with Mintoff and especially KMB
@Anthony – younger Maltese don’t know that nappies came only in terry-towelling which had to be scrubbed and boiled, along with the rubber-pants that went over them. When the first lots of disposable nappies were allowed into the country grudgingly in the mid-1980s, a packet of 10 cost the equivalent of a day’s wage. Like all imported ‘luxuries’ (which meant anything other than basic foodstuffs) they were subject to a horrendous levy that made them completely unaffordable to all but the wealthy. Post in-nisa kien fid-dar, jahslu n-neppis bl-idejn (because washing-machines cost as much as the average person earned in two months, or the equivalent of Lm900/EUR2097 today. Mintoff may have given the poor social services, but they still had to wash their clothes by hand and boil their nappies. And because most of the country was poor, that meant we were one big ghajn tal-hasselin.
Anthony – the youngsters of today would most probably ask you why you didn`t buy disposables !
Don`t you remember people filling buckets with sea water to flush toilets – waking up at 3 am to fill up containers with water trickling through for a couple of hours at ground level (we lived in a 2 nd floor flat with no lift) – and that infamous protest march by women and children demanding water and they were attacked by labour thugs at Castille.
More than 20 years later , I am still amazed when I go on the roof and at any time of the day I hear the tanks filling.
Remember the floods in Marsa October 1979? The cause was because the Minister ordered the building of dams in the flood water /sewage canal , rendering it ineffective during the storm.We had a minister posing as a civil engineer. And do not stand in his way!
Yes. The annoited system works wonderfully within the Nationalist Party. The “making of Gonzi” as PN kap, as it where, had been going on for some 10 years before his election. Speaker of the House, then Secretary General, then Minister, then Prime Minister. Simon Busuttil is clearly Gonzi’s eventual successor for the leadership. But this is the PN. So it’s OK and allowed.
Well, this morning I had a flashback to those ghastly 80`s years, I was having a shower and suddenly the water died down and started trickling slowly. The water pump stopped working and while I was there in the shower covered in foam moaning and struggling to remove the soap with the trickling water, it suddenly hit me. I remembered about the times when the great Labour was in government under Dom and that fossilized twerp KMB, when every morning we had to call for the bowser which sometimes took more then a week to come and fill our water tanks. Does anyone remember the water protests in Sliema, Daphne maybe you can get hold of some pictures of these protests and put them up here so that the youths of today can see what people of our age, I`m 44, had to put up with in the years that were meant to be the best of our lives.
Gosh I need this pump fixed at once, otherwise I`ll start thinking that I`m back under Labour.
It is hard to believe that during the glorious mintoff days we actualy were reduced to importing water from sicily! i remember once we had to return a tankerful of water because it was contaminated with oil.those days also saw the introduction of bottled water into malta and if today we are facing a problem with all the plastic in our environment it is all thanks to old Dom.
I think that with Simon Busutill as general secretary the PN is fed up of winning.He is like a Pader Pio tal pjagi when he speaks in debates on TV.I think that we have a lot better people for that post.
Labour has Sour Evarista and we will have Padre Simone.LOL
my goodness and to think that Mintoff was known as the “salvatur ta’ Malta”.
@Chris B.Some days ago I wrote that Labour always managed to have such loosers as leaders and after their time they are all given a hero status.Besides that, all these bunch of loosers are never fed up of the limelight and will never go away.
These people needs to get a life !
@Daphne Caruana Galizia
You was right about Alfred Sant,when you always said that HE WILL BE BACK !!!
Maybe he is already fed up playing with his rabbits. Or is he already envying his sucessor?
I also found this comment on another blog
DCG article of 6th September 1998 entitled A government for half – it says:
“Today’s winner would do well to remember all this. In Maltese elections, there is no such thing as victory. There is only relative victory, and a relative majority. Wise prime ministers should stay cogniscent of this brutal truth throughout their years in power, and proceed as though treading on eggs. Just as Caesar employed a slave to whisper into his ear “Remember you are mortal” so our prime ministers should have the message hung up, wherever they are most likely to see it throughout the day, “Remember you only represent 51 per cent of the population. The rest are against you. Given the chance they would throw you out on your ear.”
Dear Baxter, I appreciate that you got my point. I would not agree with you that we are FAR from being the envy of Europe. Many EU citizens, and I mean many, envy
1. Our health services
2. Our full employment
3. Our Care of the Elderly.
4. The level of security and safety in our homes and outside.
5. Our educational services. And much more.
What else would anyone want to be envied for ? Let’s just sit back and enjoy it !
P.S. Please do not remind me about disposable nappies because I will be up all night with recurrent nightmares.
Let’s try and forget it all while always doing our utmost to ensure none of you Malta’s future ever have to go through what we decrepit old folk had to endure.
Nowadays, we laugh at the difficulties we went through (I`m not talking about the really serious stuff) but it wasn`t a joke then.
We seemed to queue for everything and if we found tea bags, we wouldn`r query the make. No choice of tea bags. You just lump it. The highlight in the budget was the new price of tuna and kunserva.
It seems another life time.
Hawwadni ha nifhem.l-ilma jigri fit-tank tal-gebel li jkun fil-gholi u mit-tank tal-gebel imur fil-viti tal-kanna.
Heqq himm,some physics here.
Mela jekk it-tank ikun fil-gholi li ghandi nifhem fuq il-bejt,l-ilma tal-bejt ma jistax jidhol f’it-tank.
U jekk it-tank ikun fil-baxx l-ilma tal-bejt ikun jista jidhol fit-tank imma ma jistax johrog biex imur fil-viti/vitien.
Please some help as I allready ordered zewg vjeggi franka.
Joe Borg – Let us presume that Mintoff expected us to collect rainwater directly on the “turretta”. Instead of it going down into the drains, it would go down into our waterpipes (dirt and all, obviously). We could then use it for washing, cooking, drinking … With reasoning like that, better not think about how they “treated” the water that actually reached our mains in the ’70s and ’80s – especially in Sliema. (Min jaf x’bellawlna!)
marika mifsud – And luncheon meat … don’t you dare forget luncheon meat!
http://www.youtube.com?v=cYZ3P3uBh80
Incidentally, I wonder why he needed all those red hot chillie peppers! :)
Anthony – People who have lived through those days may have forgotten them temporarily, but seeing comments like these really does jog our memories. (Even the above title of the blog brought back a vision of grainy black & white Xandir Malta with Anton Grasso – Some entertainment!)
The problem with “forgetting it all” though, is that this generation (and sometimes even their parents’ too) would take things for granted and we could very easily slip back to those times …
…u fis-sikstiss in-neppis kienu jahsluhom l-irgiel, ghidilhom Daphne… u bil-wishing mexin u t-tambill draj, ukoll!
@ europarl – nahseb int kont tahsilhom in-napies…
I’m on both lists I guess!
I’m a swing voter europarl not affiliated with any particular political party, I also vote across party lines. I believe that there are quite a good percentage of voters that shifts from one party to another in Malta. In a two party system/ states like Malta, America and the UK were two major political parties dominate voting in every election, it is the floating voters who decide who will be elected.
I always voted for the majority party however in 1996 I was abroad and missed voting labour. Yes I was going to vote labour , ma nafx x’laqatni forsi Sant flu?, luckily I was abroad and missed that, x’umiljazzjoni !!
I admit I was happy when Labour party was elected but that was a premature ejaculation because after a few weeks I noticed that I was misguided. Labour party at that time had too many hidden agendas like VAT and freezing EU application which I didn’t know about. As the Sant’s saying goes “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”. Ohhh I fell for Sant’s pudding, I was stupid enough to believe that the Labour was the best party to govern in 1996.
In a two party state like Malta, the country is more stable, although there are people who are against two party system because they argue that unconventional ideas remain non influential so policies do not change rapidly such as divorce, abortion and other shelved legislations.
On the other hand the best advantage is that such elections encourage people to run negative campaigns – ad hominem – mudslinging – Manuel Cuschierism – Jason Micallefisming in an effort to attract voters.
This is morally wrong but yes I confess I really enjoy it. opppss I go blogging!!
This makes political affairs more entertaining.
@ ALL
And the person responsible for all this was welcomed by George Abela as an honoured guest!
Mintoff once said something like – don`t worry as people grumble and protest but then just accept it
He was right as we accepted that we couldn`t ask for a particular brand of tinned milk just count our lucky stars if we found tinned milk at all.
Those with young children used to buy tinned milk in bulk so that we wouldn`t have to change brands every week or so.
When my son was 6 we had gone to Sicily . He couldn`t believe that shops were stocked with the snacks he used to see on TV. He was already conditioned to accepting that these were luxuries so not allowed in to Malta.
The most embarrassing time was in Catania – the stall holders had learnt to say chocolate, tooth paste etc in MALTESE. It was the one time in my life that I pretended I was Italian.
Yes Amanda –
The problem with “forgetting it all” though, is that this generation (and sometimes even their parents’ too) would take things for granted and we could very easily slip back to those times
Maybe someone with the skill, knowledge and time could compile a list . We would all be willing to contribute
@Albert – you’re missing the point. It’s not the anointing per se that’s wrong. Anointing is actually a pretty efficient way of avoiding the ‘democratic choices’ of delegates and councillors who haven’t a clue about the qualities of an effective leader. Imagine corporations choosing their CEO by the popular vote…
No, the point is that the Labour Party has proven itself remarkably effective at anointing the worst possible person, while the Nationalist Party has somehow succeeded in choosing the best person for the times we live in.
Come on, look at the Labour Party’s choices over the last 40 years. They’re a disaster. Pre 1979 the PN was pretty disastrous, too, but after that things changed.
@Europarl – do a little bit of research into social history (some women’s magazines will help). In the 1960s, very many households didn’t have washing-machines, throughout free Europe. And if they did, it was likely to be the top-loading non-automatic kind, which meant the mara tad-dar had to babysit it. Europe was aeons away from America in terms of household mod-cons. America was were most of them were invented. But by the 1980s, the changes were great and the general standard of living had shot up in Europe (free Europe, that is). The average European household was still way behind the average American household in terms of conveniences and appliances, but was getting there. But Malta? Malta was still stuck in the 1960s. In almost 20 years, there was no improvement in the general standard of living, but rather the opposite – a worsening of it. Some social services were introduced, but people’s lives were not actually better. There were no jobs, no prospects, education was discouraged, efforts at self-improvement were defeated – you know the rest.
Calling back some memories…this time on work……
“Biex ma nhallux lil dan il-fjur ta’ pajjiz jintilef se nergghu nifthu korp iehor, differenti min ta’ qabel. Se jidhlu fih dawk ta’ bejn it-18 u l-25 sena. Ghal erbatax il-xahar biss, biex wara jsibu fl-industrija u jidhlu ohrajn flokhom. Din il-forza se jkun jisimha ‘id-dejma’, ghax irridu nfakru fl-antik.
Fl-antik il-Maltin kienu ffurmaw id-dejma li kienu johorgu bil-lejl biex iharsu u jiddefendu lil-pajjizna.
Kull sena se nibdew indahhlu forza biex nidefendu lil Malta.”
(Mintoff: Meeting – B’Kara – 31/05/1981)
I cannot find a way to stress the words ‘nergghu’ and ‘iehor’ in the opening sentence and the last sentence.
Daphne, by the 1980s, the standard of living had shot up even in unfree Europe (“L-Ewropa ta’ Abel”), contrary to what we’ve been brought up to believe (“nies li jghixu wara l-Purtiera tal-Hadid” and all that bollocks). But we were busy going down the Pyongyang road. Mintoff and KMB and the MLP screwed my childhood. Now screw ’em I say. I hope they spend another forty years wandering through the opposition desert, until the last of the Mintoff voters dies.
Knowing my luck, Mintoff himself will still be alive in 2048….
@H.P. Baxxter
Well said. That is what many sympathisers cannot understand. These bunch of ____________ (fill in as you wish) screwed the best years of our lives, and did there very best to screw the lives of our children at school, at the university and at their place of work.
There is nothing that can compensate for all the time (read life) lost fighting every inch of the way to remove them from office. Although I feel that it was more than worth it, it still is lost life.
Amanda-back in the 70’s 80’s when we used to spend the summer holidays in a small “mezzanin” in st.Georges’bay B’Bugia, we were already enjoying (waste water recycling). As you know water was very scarce & we used to fill buckets of sea water to flush the toilet.
Now the problem was that the main seware was broken and drainage was seeping in the middle of the bay,so when we fill the bucket with seawater it was already contaminated.
@H.P. Baxxter
In one of the posts Daphne wrote that she will spit on his grave. Well, first she must stand in the bee line, and wait her turn.
It will surely take some time because I am sure many will not just spit and move on.
@ Joe Borg – it’s very to understand as long as you first understand that under Mintoff all rules including those of physics and gravity could be bent to his will…
I’m glad I found this blog. I think it must the first time in my life that I’ve encountered fellow countrymen who share my feelings about the Mintoff Régime. Too often, acting under the illusion that “another civil war” is to be avoided at all costs, and that “those years are now over”, the media, our “intellectuals”, our journalists, our politicians (including the most rabid PN militant), have refrained from using straight talk when discussing the Mintoff Era. I’ve made my views known on this forum, and you know where I stand: I don’t think senility should be an excuse for not standing trial. Of course a judicial trial is impossible, given our pathetic laws regarding poltical corruption/incompetence, abuse of power, er, ‘power of incumbency’ and all that stuff. But, hell, our journalists and historians should grow a spine.
If Daphne really said that she will spit on Mintoff’s grave, then I raise my hat to her, as a Maltese citizen, and as a European citizen. The only other public figure who’s ever discussed the Mintoff regime and called a spade a spade, as far as I know, must be Joseph Pirotta (and he’s one hell of a switched-on chap, by my definition). If anyone can add some names to my “Hall of Fame”, I’d be most grateful.
Joe Borg – We’ve all got horror stories of some sort. A neighbour in the ’80s had opened her tap – and out came a tadpole! If I recall correctly, her case was actually mentioned in parliament in 1983/84.
It seems that after winning the last election, all the Nationalists want to do is remember what Dom Mintoff did almost 30 years ago. Maybe they’re trying to compare as with a massive surcharge increase round the corner, a hike in the price of petrol and diesel and a hefty continued rise in food prices, we might have been better off in the dark days of Deserta, Colgate and Grundig after all!
Hi Mario P, I agree with you 100%. and to add something more he bent chemistry as well to his will,as probably he is taking longivity pills.
Mcomb – At least now there are jobs, there are choices and – most important of all – THERE’S PEACE OF MIND. YOU CAN’T PUT A PRICE ON THAT.
Deserta, toothpaste and the like were the least of our worries in the Mintoff days, but their very existence is a reflection of the times themselves.
When I read this, I got the same difficulty as Joe Borg. How was the rain water to go into the tank? Anyone has the blue-print of this project? Or was political power so absolute that they could subjugate the laws of nature and reverse the law of gravity to make water “gravitate” upwards into the tank?
[Moderator – The water would gravitate upwards as it tried to get as far away from Mintoff as possible. He’s so ugly, sweat runs backwards off his forehead to get away from his face! – M. Ali]
@Freethinker – we’re forgetting that Mintoff is a perit, which means that he is both an architect and a civil engineer. It doesn’t say much for our university – but then we already knew that because Anglu Farrugia graduated magna cum laude, and he can neither spell nor write.
@Mcomb
Surcharge increases,petrol and diesel price increases and rises in food prices are not agreeable things for anyone.
But I think you must admit that these measures would be due not for bad local govt. policies, but due to global issues we all know about.
On the other hand, the ‘bad old days’ being mentioned here have been the fault of the local Socialist-cum-Communist govt.
While the rest of the world had its fair share of problems, they moved on. We (and by we I mean the Govt.) chose to stay put knee-deep in s__t.
Some people seem to make statemnets without checking facts. They say that the standard of living had ‘shot up’ in Eastern Europe in the 1980’s. Where? In Poland, in East Germany? Even the UK had 3 million unemployed in the 80’s under that economic terrorist dictator Margaret Thatcher. Get real.
[Moderator – Too bad our own dictator was both an economic terrorist and a real guns ‘n’ explosions one to boot. Margaret Thatcher may have been opposed to government funding of higher education, but as far as I know she never sent thugs to beat up students – or to burn down publishing houses and to ransack the law courts.]
I don’t know why DCG started to pull Mintoff items out of old hat (after all he’s supporting George Abela who is suppoed to be part of the ‘can-doers’ of the MLP). I’ve been reading John Manduca’s latest book, ‘The Flavour of the Mintoff Era’ and that too concentrates exclusively on the goings on in those days. It seems to be part of a plan orchestrated by the PN freemasons to alienate the public from what is going to hit it hard in the next few months.
[Moderator – Ah yes, here we go again with reptilian humanoids who inhabit a hollow earth. The word ‘alienate’ has a different meaning in English to the Maltese ‘aljena’. I think the word you mean to use there is ‘distract’.]
Re nappies, water in the tap etc.
In the summer of ’79 I was still a fourth former and I went to London with my uncle for my first holiday abroad. We went to oxford street and I had a culture shock! You could actually choose before you buy items such as shoes and even chocolates! In one particular shop we opened a bar of chocolate and ate it till we reached the counter. We handed in the empty wrapper at the till and were met with ‘You must be Maltese!’ and a pitying smile from the lady at the till. My uncle is blue eyed and fair skinned and fair haired, and no one even thinks he is Maltese before he opens his mouth. So our ‘glory days’ under labour, be it Mintoff, KMB or any other were actually the laughing stock of a whole continent!
Dear Mr David S,
I don’t think that PBO desreves your remark made previously on this blog. Afterall he won 4 consecutive mandates to run the capital city’s local council, moreover he was very nearly elected on the very tough 10th district in the last general elections. Not to mention his very active role in the PN’s executive committee, as seat which has occupied since 1990.
@ J A. nothing personal about PBO . can you mention one notable difference in Valletta for which he was responsible….PS the paving works, moving of Monti and CVA were all central govt (Austin Gatt) doing.
The Valletta council under the leadership of PBO is just going nowhere.
and being first on the list of an electoral ballot helps immensely with getting elected….check the transfer of votes. It really is quite something to be the first alphbetically and still NOT GET elected in a bye election.
PBO is certainly out of his depth for secretary general, and certainly not good for the party.
Forget CVA etc, can Austin Gatt do something about the buses ? That dear bloggers is the million dollar question and no-one is publishing the lung cancer figures. They are so scary !
@ david s… Looks very obviuos that you have a personal agenda against PBO. Any other comments are superfluous…
Some of the contributors to this blog are keeping alive one of the least apetising traits of Maltese society (so well exploited by our dear Mr Mintoff): an inability to consider things, especially history, from a balanced perspective. Forgive me for observing that the tone is rather hysterical, unbalanced and at times simply factually incorrect.
Yes there was a water crisis in the eighties and yes the Labour administration was late in coming with a solution. The solution was however provided by the same labour administration: desalination plants. As far as I remember the crisis was largely over by 1987. And yes the solution has been very much refined and perfected by successive Nationalist administrations and also by considerable scientific developments independent of the powers that be.
The water crisis was, incidentally, largely brought about by a huge increase in tourist arrivals during the 80s. The nationalists, of course, are also responsible for building upon the tourism industry since. I do not forget that it was a Nationalist administration in the 60s that started the tourism industry, as we know it today, in the first place.
As for disposible nappies. No matter what we would like to remember, during the 80s disposible nappies were still very much a luxury in most places in Europe and their use was not as widespread as we would like to believe. Malta was still, and let us not kid ourselves still is, a developing country. That is why we still have frequent power cuts, public transportation that does not deserve comment, an infrastructure that …. well we all use the roads, and that it is why eyesores have sprouted all over places that were still very beautiful up to the late 80s. The loss of the architectural gem that was Sliema is but one example. For this the PN shares the larger part of the blame.
The standard of living of Maltese households did improve considerably during the 70s. To deny the social revolution that took place during this period is simply to deny history. Beggars were still around in the early seventies and people were still emigrating from our islands because prospects in the late sixties were not as bright as some of us would like to remember. Were the Nationalists responsible for mass emigration? Of course not. Malta was in the process of transforming its economy from a Military based one to a real free market economy. The process continued throughout the seventies and eighties. SGS, which was for many years an important pillar of our economy, first invested on our island during the eighties. Malta had a lot of catching up to do in the post-war reality.
To its credited the Nationalist Party embraced the social agenda with stronger commitment that it had done up to the early seventies.
The introduction of civl marriage during the seventies was not without social protest. Some Nationalist MPs expressed strong dissent at the decriminilisation of homosexual acts.
Do I forget or deny the violence of the eighties? The silliness of many economic and pseudo social policies? Do I deny that the Nationalists coming to power in the late 80s was a much need breath of fresh air? Oh for the love of reason do I have to answer?
However violence was not new to Malta when horrible acts of violence were committed during the 70s or 80s. Terrible acts of violence, physical, moral and psychological, were committed during the 60s. The police and authorities of the era conveniently looked away and at times contributed to them just as they did in later times. Do we deny that the nationalist party was elected to power in the 60s also partly (no not just because of) orchestrated acts of violence and moral intimidation?
Let us remember that there was a time when reading a labour party newspaper was an act that was followed by serious social repurcussions. To lay the blame at the Church’s feet and to believe that the Nationalist party (and all the other parties in existence at the time) did not exploit this reality and encourage it tacitly is convenient but incorrect. It is tantamount to believing that pigs will fly or to have believed in Sant’s vision of Malta as L-Izvizzera fil-(or was it tal- ? I forget) Mediterran.
Am I trying to justify Labour’s past? No. Do I not remember it? Yes I do. Perhaps that is why I have never voted for the Labour Party. I do however regret that I have yet to see a Labour party that I could vote for. Democracy in political life requires checks and balances and at present there are very little to speak of.
6th paragrapth “credit” not “credited”