Lest we forget (some things)

It seems almost unbelievable to think that practically 25 years ago to the day that this article will be published, Raymond Caruana, a young PN supporter, was lying in a pool of his own blood, on the floor of the PN Gudja Club.

He had been felled by bullets shot from the gun of someone in a vehicle which sped by in the dead of night. His murder was the worst in a series of violent incidents which characterised the ever-escalating political violence of the 1980s.

It was also the catalyst for change and a transformation of the political landscape.

The general feeling was that such horrors could not continue to be perpetuated and people voted out the Socialist government of the time (albeit by a mere 4,000 or so, votes).

But Raymond Caruana was not only the innocent victim of crime. His murder was the one which launched a thousand publicity campaigns. From the days after his death, in PN mass meetings held through the years, to the commemorative events being held by the PN this week, we are not allowed to forget Caruana’s death.

I remember a meeting on the Fosos where a huge backdrop featuring Caruana’s face billowed behind the stage as the crowd chanted the words of a song about the young political martyr. That’s where small circular stickers bearing the words, ‘Raymond Caruana – martri tal-liberta’ (Raymond Caruana – Martyr for Freedom) were handed out.

Then there were the periodical reminders – the programmes on Net TV, the odd Xarabank programme (with a bit about the Karin Grech murder thrown in to ‘balance’ things out in accordance to that absurd notion of what passes for impartiality in this country).

The murder of Caruana was given pride of place in Liberta Mhedda the book written by veteran PN journalist Dione Borg, which also focuses big time on the accusations made by Ganni Psaila ‘Il-Pupa’ an erstwhile Labour thug who found God and the Nationalist Party – but only after Labour had been booted out of office. Just this week Borg’s Evidenza programme – one about cold cases – was all about the RaymondCaruana case.

I have no doubt that things will continue in this vein in the coming weeks and in forthcoming anniversaries of that fatal shooting of December 5. We will not be allowed to forget. That’s fine with me. Remembering may go some way towards ensuring that we do not give rise to the toxic atmosphere of hatred and a repeat of those violent days.

If the PN is trying to eke any political mileage from incidents which took place so long ago, it can go ahead and do so, although I doubt it would swing many voters of the younger generation who feel they are too far removed from them to consider them as actualities.

But I have a thing about consistency. If so much effort is expended (and rightly so) in ensuring that we never forget the injustices wreaked on people who were framed and of corrupt policemen who closed an eye to the goings-on of thugs, why isn’t the same attention given to those police officers who were alleged to have participated in torture sessions and frame-ups during Labour times, and who were promoted under the PN?

Why isn’t the beam of publicity directed on to the police officers who were involved – in any capacity – in the frame-up on Pietru Pawl Busuttil? Why don’t we get constant reminders of their steady upwards trajectory throughout the ranks, perhaps accompanied by grainy footage of them intheir heyday, when it was so much easier to plant incriminating weapons on political enemies?

I guess we won’t be seeing much of those. That’s because it’s so much easier to continue presenting events in black and white terms where the innocent were slain and the bad guys got their just desserts and were shamedin the Nationalist utopia that followed.

It’s convenient, easy to understand and fits in perfectly with a narrative where the country is forever divided into the good and the bad. So much for justice, and everyone getting his due. The hideous reality which emerges from the Raymond Caruana murder is that a young man lost his life.

His martyrdom has become part of the national myth and we are invited to commemorate it every so often, but that’s where it stops and where selective amnesia sets in, lest we remember some unsavoury detail which mars our picture of history.

cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt