Salvu Felice Pace, Ġħasri
Distorted truth about the Labour party's past
Those who are familiar with my Cyber Space column in a Sunday paper know how I always encourage the complimentarity of the printed media and the online media. This newspaper is managing to combine the two in an admirable way. That doesn't mean, however, that readers of both types of media are necessarily getting the full picture about each particular debate inspired by a piece of writing.
A stark example is that of the different responses to the article penned by Desmond Zammit Marmara' The Truth About Labour's Past (June 26). No letters appeared here about it. Yet the online version elicited 10 responses. They were mostly critical of the writer, accusing him of attempting to rewrite history about Labour's violent past. One accusation showed that the hurt caused years ago is still acutely felt. So wrote an E Azzopardi: "Desmond you might try to re-write history but you can never erase the fear and dread from our memories".
And there were some poignant reminders to Mr Zammit Marmara that the number of thugs that were allowed to terrorise ordinary people were not "only a small group of Labour supporters who instigated and carried out these acts of violence". There were hundreds of them in Birkirkara on the night the private residence of Eddie Fenech Adami was ransacked. Another point refuted by an online writer was his theory that it was Labour's spectacular victory in 1976 that heralded a period of violent disturbances. Totally untrue. Labour had embraced violence in the 1950s during the integration campaign and persecuted Nationalist supporters who celebrated Independence Day between 1971-76.
What one writer found most objectionable was Mr Zammit Marmara's view that "only two or three ministers, renowned for their violent language and personal retinue of thugs and criminals, who were mostly to blame." If he is so keen to establish the whole truth, why didn't he name these two or three ministers? He opened his article by calling on all Labourites "to be honest about the party's past". Then why doesn't he implore people like Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, George Vella, Joe Debono Grech, Joe Mizzi and others to come clean about what they knew what was happening around them and why there were no persecutions and why the memory of some failed them so badly, when they gave testimonies in court during prosecutions that were conducted after the 1987 change of government?
Mr Zammit Marmara' has opened a Pandora's box. Does he recall the frame-ups of innocent people? Does he recall how a Gozitan surgeon was marched out of the operating theatre by Labour thugs during the doctors' dispute which lasted 10 years and how this same surgeon was blatantly accused later of abandoning a patient? Does he recall Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici's praising the thugs who ransacked the Curia calling them "the aristocracy of the workers"?
No amount of window-dressing which is being indulged in at present by the love-in guru Joseph Muscat will change Labour's shameful past history. What is needed is true contrition by weeding out those who still militate in the Labour Party today and whose hands are tainted by Labour's violent past. But that would be asking for a real conversion and not for politically convenient gestures.
My appeal to online writers is not to refrain from sending their views to the printed media. After all what appears in this newspaper appears online too but not the other way round.
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Salvu Felice Pace
Jul 18th 2008, 10:46
d. Attard accuses me of living in the past. It was Desmond Zammit Marmara' who opened up Labour's past. I just corrected his distorted views. Attard finds the truth unpalatable, hence his irrelevant material.
He reveals the impoverished politics that the Labour Party practised for years. No to Local Councils, liberalisation, pluralism... and the big NO to the EU.
Environmental and educational standards, state of roads etc. Without EU membership the situation would have been worse. Here comes the vision thing. Joseph Muscat was incapable of seeing the great improvements which are happening and which will carry on happening. How right was Emanuel Fenech in pointing out that if Joseph Muscat had his way, he wouldn't be talking about beind the best in Europe. As a leader of the Labour Party he will always be told that no thanks to him, we are in the EU. Muscat put obstacles in the way and supported Alfred Sant blindly. Muscat showed no guts about Europe.
The MLP has a history of gutless politicians. When people disappeared, when a man was killed at the Police Hqs, when innocent people were being framed for crimes, did anyone resign in protest?
emanuel fenech
Jul 17th 2008, 15:48
Perhaps if more readers knew that they may submit their contributions to the print media also by e-mail, more would bother to try. The print media doesn't, though, beat the cyber space in immediacy. and that is what most people want nowadays.
As to the commnets of d. attard, here is a typical example of someone weaned on Super one news. had we all followed joseph muscat's advice we would not be in europe. how is that for a sound piece of advice. and before attard or someone else retorts that j.m. has acknowledged that he was wrong to oppose e.u. membership, then my reply is how can we trust j.m. judgement if he was wrong on the most momentous decision the country had to take in the last quarter of a century!
d.attard
Jul 17th 2008, 15:12
People like Salvu Felice Pace may want to stay lost somewhere in the twentieth century because he may perhaps not have it in him to live the present day circumstances of a failed Nationalist Party and its multi-million part-time hospital, worst environmental conditions in the EU, tap water no one dares drink, JPO, horrible education standards, third-world streets, social fabric in tatters with an unacceptable rate of children not living with their natural parents, gambling halls and user-friendly gambling structures within easy reach, Transport system that is not short of being a joke, cost of living going through the roof, among lowest of wages in the EU, employment by contract that has brought many a family to its knees, MEPA who produces a press release even before the start of a hearing, and so on and so forth. No wonder that Mr Felice Pace wants to stay immersed in his own cycloptic version of the 20th Century.
Jospeh gives hope to this shambles of a country and anyone who loves Malta should support all those with a vision to take Malta towards progress within Europe.
George Curmi
Jul 17th 2008, 14:56
@ Laurence Schembri
Do you mean people like Desmond Zammit Marmara, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, Joe Debono Grech, Anthony Agius Decelis, Marie Louise Coleiro Preca, and so on, and so on? It's quite a long list of MLP double-barreled surnames isn't it?
Come on Mr. Schembri, get off it
laurence schembri
Jul 17th 2008, 13:20
Just out of curiosity, why is it that most Nationalists share a double-barrel surname?