Joseph Muscat – September 1998

I read this (see scan below) just now and a few things occurred to me immediately.

1. Muscat describes the situation which drove so many away from the Labour Party. He appears to have had the same objections, but they didn’t drive him away. Why not, and what does that say about him?

2. He came to power partly by revisiting that past and reinventing it as something to be proud of, with talk of the Golden Years of Labour and a big exhibition which celebrated Labour history but left out this most crucial 16-year chunk which caused so much revulsion.

3. He consolidated his position as party leader by publicly embracing the very worst politicians of those years, celebrating Joe Grima at party meetings, standing Karmenu Vella at his right hand, and going to China with Alex Sceberras Trigona to sign an out-of-order bilateral agreement between the Chinese government and the Labour Party in Opposition. Had Lorry Sant and Patrick Holland not died of cancer before their time, he would have celebrated them too and made them his personal consultants on public works and trade.

4. Muscat’s first acts on coming to power were to put the surviving relics of those hideous years into positions of power and influence. Mintoffian/KMB era ministers Joe Grima, Karmenu Vella, Alex Sceberras Trigona and Leo Brincat were made Prime Minister’s special envoy to the World Tourism Organisation, Minister for Tourism (and then European Commissioner), special envoy to the World Trade Organisation, and Environment Minister. He made Marie Louise Coleiro, who was secretary-general of the Malta Labour Party in its worst years, Social Policy Minister (and now head of state).

5. When he speaks in public, the surviving thugs of those years, who used to beat people up, are among the audience and Il-Qahbu is the first to greet and hug him.

5. His methods in government are increasingly akin to those he claimed, in 1998, to have disapproved of, minus the physical violence but with moral violence instead, particularly on the internet and via the Labour Party’s broadcast and print media. Post Alfred Sant, he has created an atmosphere among the Labour Party in which you can sense that the totalitarian element is literally chafing to get out there and rip people to shreds at the first ring of the starting-bell. That in itself is really bad.