Robert Henry Bugeja, in his article The Politics Of Division (October 30) urged "good people out there" to "think again" if they were of the opinion that "Malta saw the light when the Nationalist Party came to power in 1987".
He reminded all "good people out there" that the December 12, 1981 official general election result, endorsed by the then Electoral Commission, was: Malta Labour Party 109,990 valid votes equivalent to 34 parliamentary seats; Nationalist Party 114,132 valid votes equivalent to 31 parliamentary seats. Therefore, as a consequence of this result, contrary to what Mr Bugeja conveniently forgot to say, were it not for the gerrymandering of the electoral districts which gave what became known as a "perverse result", the Nationalist Party should not have returned "to power" (his expression) in 1987 but as from December 12, 1981.
One wonders why the correspondent then went on to praise Dom Mintoff, even going on to describe him as the person who "saved the country from chains of ignorance" since, on June 9, 1998, Malta Labour Party leader Alfred Sant called Mr Mintoff "a traitor" during a Vittoriosa mass meeting.
This contributed to the dissolution of Parliament on July 7, 1998, with another general election being announced on September 5, 1998. Was this columnist praising Mr Mintoff because he was faulting Dr Sant's Malta Labour Party?
From this, and from other writings coming from Maltese Socialist quarters, it is evident that certain people (among whom some former Mintoffians and one new consultant) are in despair in trying to build a Joseph Muscat personality cult hailing him as a "leader" attractive to people who "might wish to cross the political divide", even though well knowing that this ploy will not succeed, for the simple reason that the new (yet another) Labour leader (chosen on June 6, 2008) is revealing that he is rather shallow in his social and political analysis of the local situation and, worse still, he is also coming over as being rather conceited and immature whenever he speaks out.