Given that Muscat admires the PN and its policies so much, why did he join the Labour Party?
They’re all climbing over themselves now to say how European they are and how they voted Yes in the EU membership referendum despite campaigning for the No vote.
But the Brass Neck Award really has to go to the prime minister for his speech at the UN (for relevant point, see pic posted here).
Who was in government for the vast majority of those 50 years?
That’s right: the Nationalist Party with PM Borg Olivier (1964 to 1971), with PM Eddie Fenech Adami (1987 to 1996 and 1998 to 2004), and with PM Gonzi (2004 to 2013).
That’s THIRTY-ONE years of the 50.
The Malta Labour Party was in government with PM Mintoff (1971 to 1984), with PM Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici (1984 to 1987), with PM Sant (1996 to 1998) and with PM Muscat (2013 to 2014). Nobody can claim that at any point during 18 of those 19 years, the Maltese government and Malta itself was “ambitious in favour of peace, progress and prosperity”.
The opposite was true. We allied ourselves with the communist dictatorships, bloody oppressors and totalitarian states of the world, and before 1989 we were firmly allied with Iron Curtain Europe rather than with free Europe. Our committed European and campaigner for human rights and freedoms, EU Commissioner Karmenu Vella, was a big part of that.
Liars and frauds, the lot of them. Their politics are not the politics of genuine conviction, but they merely hitch themselves to a bandwagon as the best and most effective means of achieving power and influence for themselves personally. It’s not typically Maltese – people like this are everywhere – but because of the peripheral nature of life in Malta, this has become the dominant mentality. It is the reason we can’t get beyond a certain point, why social evolution has plateaued and why we’re going through yet another massive brain drain.
“Ambitious in favour of peace, progress and prosperity?” That’s not even literate.
32 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
They seem to have forgotten ‘neutrality’ completely.
“The Labour Party believes Malta’s neutrality was a tool that should be treasured and actively used to promote peace and understanding between nations.
Speaking during a reception for the Diplomatic Corp, Labour leader Joseph Muscat said Malta had to re-discover its vocation for the Mediterranean, Africa and the rest of the world.
“In order to do so we believe that we should treasure and actively use our Constitutional neutrality.
“We think that if used wisely, this is the best way in which we can pursue our goal of promoting peace and understanding between nations.”
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CC4QFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.timesofmalta.com%2Farticles%2Fview%2F20100115%2Flocal%2Fneutrality-should-be-used-to-promote-peace-joseph-muscat.289935&ei=FIozVNeWGIbOaNyIgdgM&usg=AFQjCNGcjGjMCoKlpJM4_CYi-btxSizdAg&sig2=GMhHGOwO7E-isvu5C3qvyw
Ironic, isn’t it?
“In order to do so we believe that we should treasure and actively use our Constitutional neutrality”.
“Actively use neutrality”?
How can one be active when ‘neutrality’ prevents one from doing something?
Technically, you could use it to promote yourself as an honest broker when resolving inter-state conflicts, like Switzerland has been doing for years.
Then again, I hardly imagine someone like Muscat or Vella being able to convince anyone that they can be honest.
Second prize goes to Karmenu Vella for brazenly getting away with political murder.
The runner up must be Leo colour TVs Brincat for his talk of solidarity and justice and his deep concern for democracy.
” It’s not typically Maltese – people like this are everywhere – but because of the peripheral nature of life in Malta, this has become the dominant mentality.”
It’s so rampant in Malta, that I feel the Malta I grew up in exists no longer.
How people can continue to socialise with each other with all this going on at every level is beyond me.
It’s as though there are no connectors, even though the false reasoning states that in order to survive they need to “live with it.”
The “me too” mentality means that many of the left and right alike are caught up in these webs of deceit: superficial and materialistic, leading where exactly?
The illusion works. To each his own dream of bluffed betterment. By the time they realise, if they ever do, that a rat race is cyclicly identical and roots get ground to a pulp with each cycle, life would have passed them by entirely.
How many dare to assume responsibility?
How many are ready to be “left out” for what they stand for?
How many are left that recognise each other in the dark?
Your weaknesses and vices are what Muscat counts on.
It is the only thing he is ambitious about.
They’re the conscious target of the #HammalliUnited control unit.
Your vices and weaknesses keep him where he is.
What he explicitly doesn’t want, are your strengths.
The two, despite current reigning evidence to the contrary, are different.
“Leeching out on corruption, deceit and overt greed” would have been more accurate a tale.
All you mention is now shrouded in the dangerous veil of positive thinking.
You forgot to mention Mintoff’s flirting with a communist front AAPSO and secret treaties with communist North Korea clandestinely acquiring hardware and expertise to suppress the right of freedom of peaceful assembly to the opposition Nationalist Party
That was the old devil’s way of showing his party’s ambition for peace, progress and prosperity – and which he tried to inculcate for posterity in his much vaunted socialist generation.
I, too, have lived the daily persecution and torture under the man’s socialist-Marxist regime between June 1971 and May 1987, Dr. Saliba.
Unfortunately not so many of us are still around in their thousands – certainly not within the Opposition party itself.
The others appear to have either never heard of what went on or calling us ‘Jeremiahs’ for rightly refusing to forget.
Daphne’s entry (in to-day’s blog) about the Opposition’s lack of harsh criticism seems to be too true.
Daphne, You’re being too kind. 1982 to 1987 Labour were effectively voted out but hung on to power. Make that 36 from 50?
[Daphne – Regardless of the circumstances, the Maltese government 1981 to 1987 was Labour. It is the government that shapes a country’s policies and direction, not the Opposition.]
Joseph Muscat should be nominated for the Liar of the Century.
They have always been liars, frauds — and thieves and bullies too — and a leopard will never change its spots.
Hanzir taqtaghlu denbu, hanzir jibqa. U hanzir tlibbislu sjut u ingravata, hanzir bl-ingravata u sjut ikun! :-)
Will Sai Mizzi be getting the increase for the cost of living?
Is the General Workers still functioning?
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20141007/local/cost-of-living-wage-rise-expected-to-be-116-per-week.538756Union
Why not, miskina.
Joseph Muscat chose the Malta Labour Party simply because he knew that the path to the top was shorter and easier to manipulate.
Given his family background, he could just as easily have chosen the Nationalist Party, but he knew that it would be harder to make it to the leadership.
Unfortunately we have many examples of politicians who chose a party on the basis of opportunity rather than ideals. Some years ago we had Sandro Schembri Adami, an erstwhile diehard Nationalist who when rejected by PN, opted for Labour and was elected 3 times in a row.
Franco Debono is cut from the same cloth, as is Jeffrey Pullicino.
Right to vote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9HObTKZQZI&feature=youtu.be
‘…It’s not typically Maltese – people like this are everywhere – but because of the peripheral nature of life in Malta, this has become the dominant mentality. It is the reason we can’t get beyond a certain point, why social evolution has plateaued and why we’re going through yet another massive brain drain….’
In 2014, when everything is wired, fast and evolving beyond traditional means, Malta faces losing its once competitive edge.
Call it critical mass. Malta’s was a fine balance between physical limits and outlook, a capacity to shift paradigms, not anymore.
If I may, not only does he admire the PN, he just has to keep it as close as possible, Malta taghna lkoll includes the PN, the ‘true nationalists’.
Lately he’s taken to following Simon Busuttil, very closely, and will slide past to wherever there’s political space. Musical chairs.
So he’s all out against the ‘criminal’ hunters. That the referendum be redundant, what with our own lord protector.
Then Freedom5 will say Simon Busuttil’s ineffective and politics are achieved.
Life has a funny way of catching up with oneself. In this case, I await the moment.
What initiatives did Socialist administrations take in the United Nations to promote their vaunted aims?
It was the Nationalists who introduced the concept of the seabed as a Common Heritage of Mankind that lead to the Third UN Conference of the Law of the Sea.
The initiative in the UN on Climate Change was also a Nationalist idea.
One could also add the Care for the Aged. Another idea, which admittedly fell by the wayside, was a Register for Trade in Arms.
Mintoff could be credited with laying emphasis on security in the Mediterranean being relevant to security in Europe during the CSCE, but the way he went about it damaged the concept because he created resistance to his unreasonable demands like having Mediterranean Arab countries, but not Mediterranean Israel, participate.
And lest we forget, for Mintoff Western Europe was the Europe of Cain while Communist Eastern Europe was the Europe of Abel.
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/business/business_news/44662/sicily_imports_controversy_scicluna_calls_for_wellthought_out_solutions#.VDPMNWeSxmM
Why does this sound like another of Muscat’s broken promises?
So free movement of people, goods and services cannot make use of the catamaran, wonder what’s unfair with that one. And those aren’t imports dearest Maltatoday, in a domestic continent, the term simply doesn’t apply.
Talk about Labour doublespeak.
This rewriting of history is just a telltale sign of the totalitarian hiding behind that wiċċ tad-daqqiet ta’ ħarta.
I hate saying this, but before the election in 2013 I had already realised the superficiality of Joseph Muscat. He is after one ego trip and another, as long as he is in the limelight, as long as he can pose for those photoshoots. It is all PR …it all works for the camera.
I do believe he joined the MLP at the time because he saw this golden opportunity of reaching the limelight. On the other hand, I also believe there is no real, tangible strategy to improve the national wealth and social well-being.
Let us hope that mask slips away completely – it is already slipping off.
Pimps, thieves and scoundrels – no more, no less.
More bait for the gullible.
The only ambition Muscat has is to make himself and his wife richer. After ten years at Castille, they will be filthy multi-millionaires.
Muscat is Mintoff’s reincarnation. The Dwarf of Malta piled up huge sums of money in Swiss banks while we in Malta were offered scraps and forced to go off to Sicily to even buy toothpaste.
Yes, Muscat is an ambitious man indeed, only where his own prosperity comes into play. As if he is interested in Malta’s interests.
Manuel Mallia is eating everything in sight.
He starves his Romanian wife because he eats her meals and now is sizing up a priest for an afternoon snack.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20141007/local/mobile-police-stations-in-marsascala-paceville-no-decision-on-publication-of-reports.538822
He does not admire anything but spending our money and power for himself.
First he makes us pay the salaries of scores of party hacks and bear the burden of hundreds more useless public sector jobs like an extra ambassador in the form of Mrs Konrad Mizzi.
He sells off our national energy infrastructure to Communist China, he kicks out Arriva for a more expensive and less efficient option, plonks an enormous LNG tanker in the middle of our bay, and then he says he worries about the terrible cost of elections. Give us a break.
All I really want to know is: Where do we keep the life-boats?
Glad to see there’s more than half a dozen of us.
We are the ones who voted PN so this country could drag itself into Europe and modernity, only to find that nothing really changed after 2003, except for a flood of EU funds.
We are the ones who voted PN because we thought they wanted to change the paradigm, only to find they wanted more of the same: lucre and feathered nests, more concrete and high-rises, kacca fir-rebbiegha and a massive nanny state.
We are the ones who voted PN in 2013 despite the malpractice and corruption and the sclerotic thought processes of the administration and the ignorance, stupidity, cupidity and pig-headedness of most of its candidates, because they were the better option.
Only to be told, once the votes were counted, that the Nationalist Party is now in sync with Labour and won’t oppose anything. Because it’s good to be “positive”. And nothing in Maltese society is to be changed, no matter how rotten, because it’s good to be patriotic, and these are all traditions, right?
We’ve had enough of this crap. Malta needs a second party. Not a third party, but a second one, given that Labour and the Nationalist Party are option 1a and 1b. We need Option 2. Call it the Liberal Republican Party.
Indeed Bax, but the new Liberal Republican Party will be made up mostly from supporters of party 1a and party 1b, the same dimwits, opportunists and why not, corrupt elements.
So, we will end up with Parties 1a, 1b and 1c. Remember it’s the same pie the parties will share.
When forming a Party, it is not only the quality of candidates which counts, it is also the quality of party members/supporters who vote for it.
Will you lead it? Women would vote in droves.
No. We’d need someone who’s financially and maritally stable to lead it, or it would look like campus politicking. I want a real electable alternative, not a protest party. I’ll be the chief strategist and write its policies. But someone else must lead it.
Oh and in answer to Angus Black’s comment, which I shall write in block capitals: THE QUALITY OF THE ELECTORS MATTERS NOT ONE JOT.
A number on a ballot sheet is just that. All votes are equal, and I am happy with anyone’s vote, be it that of thieves, crooks and scoundrels, bird-shooters, screaming harridans, hamalli or snobs, Kenneth’s, Astrid’s, Norman Lowell’s or even Kevin Ellul Bonici’s.
I really like seeing Joseph Muscat using a teleprompter, that shows that he’s about to tell a convenient lie.