If we really desire closure

Much as I consider the territory overgrazed, last Wednesday's leader in The Times, which found me eyebrow-raising on the subject of political violence, draws me out to clarify certain issues concerning my political views and baggage.

The Sunday Times asked to interview me, mainly about party ideology and secularism. The published interview was a fair and loyal job, sticking to the point, and only tangentially touching on violence.

I did not think that I was entering the proverbial spider's parlour, to be soon after slammed by this sister publication in an editorial. I'm not suggesting this was planned.

I served my stint as MLP secretary as a young man, between 1977 and 1983. In politics, it was a good time and it was a spirited time. Labour haters have made it their mission, unremittingly to define those years in the darkest of tones, a darkness that mirrors mostly their own cynicism.

All that gets evoked is images of Malta burning but seldom the images of modern Malta in the making, of a nation present in the world, of an open-minded society, of social justice, of economic growth, of clean balance sheets, of sound finances, of real foundations being laid for the affluence of later years. All told, they were good years for the country. The pluses far outweigh the minuses and I am happy to have been where I was, even if to be in the kitchen you had to put up with some heat.

As regards allocating responsibility for violence, I already did my bit of explaining, in the other paper, recently on the occasion of the anniversary of The Times' burning (The Sunday Times, October 11) in which I complimented The Times for having moved on. I am aware that nothing I or anyone says can change the opinions of those whose minds are programmed to believe only what they like, or need, to believe.

My "eyebrow-raising" rhetorical question (about the political allegiance of the persons who burned The Times building) was not meant to be flippant. My point is that, since perpetrators of political violence were rarely identified, not even later by those who claimed they knew-and that raises many questions, never mind eyebrows - most assumptions about political responsibility are based on the nature of the target. A fair way of reasoning, if it were not applied exclusively against Labour and did not assume the victims were all on the other side.

The most horrendous act of political violence of all was not directed against the opponents of Labour. It took place in the closing days of 1977, when the 15-year-old daughter of a doctor, whose crime was to collaborate with the Labour government in implementing its health reforms, was blown to pieces by a letter bomb.

Where does one start chronicling violence? May we go back a few years, to the nine years of Nationalist government preceding Labour's coming to office in 1971? May we revisit the democratic farce of the mortal sin elections, when the PN and other unenlightened leaders strutted on the stage next to ecclesiastics hurling fire and brimstone at the MLP? The flagrant violations of human rights against Labour supporters. The rampant favouritism of Nationalist supporters. The vindictive transfers and exclusion of Labour ones. Does anyone think that Labour people were not boiling or had no reason to?

Last Tuesday (November 25), President Emeritus Eddie Fenech Adami was on television (Epoka, One TV) taking part in a discussion about ecclesiastical intolerance and associated abuses against human rights committed in the 1960s. He did not condone those abuses but cautioned that one must take into account "the context of the times", that one should not judge what happened then by the standards of today. Wise words. He did not extend this contextualisation to the 1970s.

Forward to the days of the Labour government, who mentions today that being blown up by a bomb placed on your doorstep or under your car was a real and present risk for anyone linked to the government? Who cares to consider that the order of the day was to destabilise the country any which way was possible? Who mentions the arms cache, complete with machine guns and grenades, discovered in a warehouse belonging to known Nationalist stalwarts, just after firearms had been found in the PN headquarters?

There was violence. There was a war of attrition going on and it took two sides to wage it. Only, when it came to anti-Labour violence, it was cold-blooded and calculated.

The logic applied against Labour - according to the victim, the culprit - cannot be applied selectively. Who calls the PN unrepentant for never admitting responsibility? Whoever implies that the PN functionaries at the time were to blame in any way?

Still, this obsession with violence recall is past its shelf life. Besides, why can't we admit that our national violence record does not begin to measure up to that of most other societies? Tell it to the Cypriots, let alone the Lebanese or Rwandans. Indeed, tell it to the Italians, the Germans, the British, the Americans.

The South Africans had something to teach the world when they drew a line on past violence and injustices through the instrument of the Truth and Conciliation Commission. They, who knew what suffering as a nation was, recognised the essential condition that reconciliation could not be achieved unilaterally. That is because, crucially, they wanted closure.

Over here, on the other hand, we may never achieve that level of reason because closure would destroy the fantasy that Labour are, and forever must be, the bad guys.