Thursday, 27th March 2008
Predictions and prattle
So the professor of geolinguistics and sociolinguistics who has half a page sabbatical, better known as the Gonzi-bashing corner, thinks he can tell people not to rush to print and that he or anybody serious never predicted any Labour landslide. And, guess when Anthony Licari said such things? Obviously, after the election.
Let me remind esteemed readers what this same person said on the eve of the election ( March 1) in the article Solitaire: "... the dying hours of this sad Administration..." and "... its puerile pre-electoral staggering largesse to impress... to make up for the... (listen to this)... several percentage points by which its trailing the MLP..." And if you're not convinced that Dr Licari was sure of a PN defeat this is what he wrote further down: "... in my opinion, the biggest election loser... will remain the creation of the awkward word gonzipn".
I would like the readers to note that Dr Licari used the word "will" not "might", which shows how sure he was of a PN defeat.
It seems that Dr Licari has forgotten that in the same article he wrote that "... these (the PN mass meetings) are a disaster and indicate that the lost sheep have not come back..." and that the PN candidates are "... huddled pessimistically together...."
Well Dr Licari, time has proved you and your party wrong and, with thousands of nationalists not voting, the MLP still never made it to government!
I think Dr Licari's time of putting words in people's mouth is over. I never said that any minority should shut up and if that's what he understood then he was grossly mistaken! So I advise him to save his human rights lectures for someone else!
I do hope that one fine day those who wrote inches of columns to ridicule Lawrence Gonzi and sparkled with the possibility of a PN defeat find their promised land somewhere in Valletta some time in 2013!
By the way, I don't think that the readers of The Times needed Dr Licari to tell them that I'm a gay rights activist; they already know. That's why I will be penning more letters encouraging the PN and politicians to keep their pre-electoral promises with gay people! But that's my business not Dr Licari's!
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Comments
Rather than the intellectual arrogance of Dr Licari, what Labour needs most now is humility and radical change. Unfortunately, Labour is obviously dead set on the status quo, changing faces (Joseph Muscat) but neither attitude nor policies.
AGC will surely not oblige. Nothing to show but that he is envious of a learned gentleman...
Those statistics have tickled so many with laughter because, let's face it, poor guys, they could not accept yet another showdown. Whilst 1,500 votes might not be a lot of votes for the MLP, try feeding, keeping, pay salaries, etc. for 1,500 people! That is why every vote counted.
One reason why the MLP lost again was the aggressive and rather despotic attitude that still prevails in the party. You can still see signs of the past lurking at the moment whilst decisions to elect a new leader are being made.
A new MLP has to totally eradicate ALL its past. As long as we see a few MLP characters (aka candidates), remnants of the 1981-1987 minority-bashing-majority government, we cannot trust them in any way.
Do not forget the days of terror - 1977 to start with, when our health services went down the drain, the 1980s until 1987 when the MLP unwanted government held the Maltese population hostage, feeding us dubious, expired and horrible food with a bulk-buying system reminiscent of Stalinist Communism; where political torture was rampant in our prisons. Do not forget Nardu Debono, the Vella brothers, the frame up of P.P. Buttigieg, the death of Ray Caruana. Remember who was in the MLP then and is still there now. You have no guarantee of a new MLP, do you? Take a look at who is at the helm of MLP and who is on the back-bench. Take a look at who nostalgically still remains tied to the Mintoffian/Mifsud Bonnici/Sant (oh yes, I have to include him for he was THERE THEN!) eras.
The MLP needs to breathe fresh air otherwise it would be nothing else than another mount-up, a facade for the people that dishes out ONLY to the MLP, and keeps those "whose DNA is faulty" and the other "serpents" under the heel.