One particular comment penned by a Joe Micallef summed up Helena Dalli’s article Tell Us One Clear Story (October 3) as “lack of analysis”, “pathetic” and “a stale piece...” in The Times website. Right on, on all counts.
To compare the resignation of former Nationalist Minister John Dalli with that of Chris Said is nothing short of a very superficial analysis, if it can be called that, simply to fit a pre-prepared conclusion by Dr Dalli, a conclusion which has already been repeated ad nauseam on Labour’s Maltastar. Dr Dalli didn’t even have the decency to point out that Mr Dalli led a ministry while Dr Said led a Parliamentary Secretariat which falls under the Prime Minister’s own portfolio.
She was even misinformed about Dr Said’s visibility the week-end that followed his resignation. He is a Gozo MP and the activities which she referred to had been announced to party activists weeks ahead. But then again, truth is dispensable for Dr Dalli. Once again she took the line peddled by Maltastar who even reported that Dr Said entered the hall in Għajnsielem after Lawrence Gonzi started his comments, to make it look as if he contrived the rousing welcome he was given. It was only after I wrote to Maltastar pointing out this blatant lie, that they removed it from the report.
Dr Dalli concluded too that the last election was won by a largesse of promises to voters on their way to the polling booths. How ridiculous can she get.
Has she not heard of the 8,000 people employed by the Karmenu Mifusd Bonnici Administration days before the 1987 election? People are not fools, they accept whatever is offered to them, but they vote the way they want to. Maybe Dr Dalli should know that Labour people were handed letters of appointment before the last election by Labour candidates marked “only to be opened on Monday”, after the election result. Some of these letters were collected from government offices very early on Monday morning.
Dr Dalli’s arrogance knows no bounds. She has decided that this government has reached its “past-its-expiry-date”. That is for the electorate to decide. In any case, who is she to talk about expiry dates when she represents a party that lost an election in 1981 and still governed until 1987?
So Dr Gonzi has lost the plot. Another pre-prepared conclusion to make sure that the idiom is used somewhere in the article. For a man who has lost the plot, the success story of our economy due to the government’s clever handling of the employment factor during the recession, Dr Gonzi is not doing too badly.
But Labour never speaks of the recession. Their aim is to distort facts and figures as they have done recently regarding the jobs created by this government.
The electorate should be aware of Labour’s present campaign of painting their party whiter than white by grossly distorting their violent and abusive past and by picking and choosing what to consider as part of Labour’s history. Desmond Zammit Marmarà in his 90 Years Of Labour Existence (October 6) did exactly that. No mention of Dom Mintoff’s first preference for integration with Britain in the 1950s, no mention of the “criminal elements who associated themselves with the PL” who were protected by Labour stalwarts and never brought to book, no mention of how our country’s neutrality was traded by Mr Mintoff in exchange for democracy, no mention of Labour’s rabid opposition to Malta’s membership of the EU, spearheaded by Alfred Sant and the present leader Joseph Muscat.
Good job that Mr Zammit Marmarà ended his amnesiac piece with the words “Labour’s past record speaks for itself”. He will find that many readers of The Times will agree with him.